its like your voting from a management perspective!
Probably because I understand the pain that management suffer in terms of organisation and wages, having had to deal with it for reliefs in a number of departments in the past.
In Victoria we've always had breaks for a 4 hour shift, and guess what, its manageable. I wouldn't be surprised if a few more 3 1/2 hr shifts are rostered tho. From an employee perspective, 4 hours with no break, especially on checkouts, is just unfair.
The two departments this will probably affect the most, in the store I work in at least, is nightfill and deli. Nightfill, people work 8-12. Normally they take a two or three minute break to walk to the lunch room and grab a drink and consume it on the way back to their aisle, and no-one has any issues with this. What will become a total pain in the arse, not to mention a serious dampner on carton rate (which seems to be the massive focus in our store at the moment), is a paid formal tea break in addition to these unscheduled drinks breaks. All it means is that nightfill will now be rostered on 8-11.45 instead. In practice, if nightfill need to hang around until 12 or 12.15 to get the job done, then they'll end up working the 4 hours anyway and won't get a tea break for it, because they won't know until 11.45 that they need to work 15 or 30mins later. As improper and 'cold' as that sounds, it's the fact of life.
The other example, deli, at the moment we have three rotations of staff on a Saturday (the busiest day of the week by a country mile), with a couple of people working 7-11, a lot of staff working 11-3, and a new batch working 3-7, with a couple of people working throughout the whole day running the department. All the new agreement means is that people will probably work 8.30-12, 12-3.30, and 3.30-7 (the deli really doesnt need people before 8.30, but they're rostered on to give everyone 4 hours anyways to make it worth people coming in), thereby cutting the pay of everyone by half an hour for each Saturday. If you asked these employees "Would you prefer half an hours' extra pay or do you want a right to take a tea break that we deliberately set the roster up so you don't need?", I think the obvious answer will be the extra pay.
Even if you vote no, and if its rejected (which it wont be!) they will simply renegotiate the agreement, so voting no because you don't like the concept of a bargaining agreement is pointless.
So is every type of 'taking-a-stand voting'. But I operate based on my own principles, not just practicalities.
Plus, there are flexibility arrangements in place, including hours during Christmas time.
Time owed sucks, speaking as someone who has a couple of full weeks sitting in the book right now. They still haven't incorporated the ability to waive overtime and get paid at base rates/time+30/time+50/time+75 for all your hours in the week you work them, and that's my biggest gripe.
So vote on whether you think this is better for employees! NOT the company's bottom line (penalty rates/ overtime)!
I'm an employee, and I don't think it's better. It will only put more stress on departments, which in turn puts more stress on employees. You also seem to be confusing "the company's bottom line" (something which I care very little for) with "wages" (something which directly affects employees in stores, hence I care about).
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