I have done a couple of media interviews over the last week on the Modern Award – one for background material to help the journalist understand where newsagents sit in the mix of the changes. Some of what I have written here has been picked up. We have a long way to go to sort out the challenges the award changes have delivered to newsagents and plenty of other businesses. The frustration is that the process of negotiating exceptions and regulatory changes is time consuming and expensive.
The changes for Qld especially as we were by far the cheapest state to live in and therefore wages were set to match. We took a beating on this issue and the net result is (the union movement must be so proud) less employees. The wife and I do Sundays on our own as we just can’t justify staff on this day.