‘Ordinary’ working week includes Saturday and Sunday

October 3 2002 - A report from acirrt, shows that an ‘ordinary’ working week includes Saturday and Sunday in almost a quarter (24%) of current registered enterprise agreements.

The implication is that the organizations involved may be routinely asking staff to work Saturdays and/or Sundays as part of their normal working arrangements. Working days that used to be regarded as being outside normal working hours used to attract a premium payment - even when allowed for in awards. This made weekend working less attractive for employers. But the report concludes that the 'weekend' provisions in agreements mean that the normal working week has effectively been redefined.

This does not necessarily mean that employees are working longer hours. Workers affected by these agreements may be working the same number of hours in total per week. But they may be less certain about the days of the week they may be asked to work.

Organizations are advantaged by these new agreements as they can deploy people more flexibly without the extra costs of premium weekend pay. It may be the case that base rates of pay have been adjusted to compensate for the absorption of penalty payments. This would leave overall earning largely unaffected but there is no conclusive evidence of the effect on overall earnings, according to the report.

Most current ‘weekend’ agreements are concentrated in four industry sectors:

- mining and construction;
- wholesale and retail trade;
- community services; and
- recreation and personal services.

In fact, working Monday to Friday is a comparatively recent practice. People in postal services, banking and manufacturing regularly were expected to do weekend work involving at least Saturday mornings as recently as thirty years ago.

Commenting on the findings acirrt director Ron Callus said "this re-emergence of Saturday and now Sunday work raises further challenges for Australian families trying to balance work and family responsibilities. With more two income earning households than ever before, families affected by weekend work provisions are going to find it difficult to find a day when all members of the household are off work together. It’s a problem for workers affected, but it is also an increasingly difficult issue for governments and employers that seek labour market flexibility. The efficiencies of greater labour market flexibility may well have a longer run, community wide downside."

See also: Agreements reduce consultation, training but increase casual working