Leader of The Nationals, Warren Truss writes:
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Warren Truss
Mother Nature will be shown the door under Rudd Labor’s modern awards process, with strawberry growers forced to delay picking until a weekday or pay massive new staff costs.
Strawberry picking waits for no man or woman – when they are ripe they have to be picked for freshness and marketability.
But this concept, which has been well understood since the dawn of horticulture, seems to have passed Labor by.
Under Labor’s proposed Horticulture Industry Award, due to come into effect from January 1, growers will have to foot penalty rates of more than 200 percent for pickers and packers working outside usual hours. This comes from new loadings and vastly higher overtime rates for Sundays, late at night or on public holidays.
Either the growers pay, or consumers will. In a highly competitive market, many growers will have to fight Mother Nature and try to only pick during normal working hours.
In parliamentary question time, I asked the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Workplace Relations, Julia Gillard, to explain why the Government was proposing a new award that would more than double wages paid to pickers on Sundays and public holidays.
“Does the Minister have a plan to ensure that strawberries only ripen on weekdays or does the Minister expect consumers to pay double for strawberries picked on holidays?”
The response from Ms Gillard was evasive, and addressed none of the concerns raised by the horticulture industry.
This is major bungle by the Minister and the Federal Government and should be re-considered as a matter of urgency.
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