Xmas Day should be holiday with penalty rates awarded

Workers in Western Australia, Queensland, the Northern Territory, Tasmania, NSW and the ACT will receive penalty rates because the governments have declared Christmas Day a public holiday.

Unions including the Liquor, Manufacturing and Hospitality Union and the Australian Nursing Federation applied to Fair Work Australia to allow penalty rates for people working on Christmas Day in states where it was not a public holiday.

But the national workplace relations tribunal said the penalty rate was not a prevailing standard in a number of modern awards.

LHMU national secretary Louise Tarrant said Christmas Day was a special day for which employees should be compensated for working on.

"It's a time when family come together in a way that happens at no other time for most people and yet if you work on that day what this decision is saying is that for people in those states where the state governments haven't stepped up and done the right thing today they are going to be penalised," Tarrant told reporters.

Workers in Victoria and South Australia would be treated as if they were working any ordinary Saturday on Christmas Day this year.

"The reality is this is not a normal Saturday, this is a special day in the community and if anybody's got to work they should be given the appropriate compensation for that."

The South Australian and Victorian governments should step up to make sure workers were appropriately compensated for being taken away from their Christmas roast or whatever it was they were doing, Tarrant said.

"It's about common decency, this is about acknowledging that this is a special day and that workers working on that day should get."

Fair Work Australia deleted a clause of the Manufacturing Award which the Australian Industry Group sought to change to say where Christmas Day falls on a Saturday, then December 27 is the recognised holiday.

The ACTU, CFMEU, Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union and other unions were successful in calling for Fair Work to delete the clause which they said was ambiguous and created uncertainty on the issue.

Australian Industry Group chief executive Heather Ridout said the decision to remove the contested holiday clause was regrettable.

"The clause has been in the award system for many years and had the effect of preventing double dipping of public holiday penalties when Christmas New Year holidays fell on a weekend and additional days were proclaimed," Ridout said.

The decision increased the importance of state and territory governments agreeing on a consistent and fair approach to proclaiming holidays, Ridout said.

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry workplace policy director David Gregory said business would be lumbered with doubled up penalty rates because states had moved away from substituting the days when Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Years Day fall on a weekend.

"This is an irrational doubling up of public holiday entitlements that will hit many small businesses hard," Gregory said.

WA employers would be the hardest hit with six public holidays over the festive season and many other states would have at least five, Gregory said.

Hospitals, aged care facilities, tourist and resort operators, retailers and catering businesses would now face unbudgeted additional costs, he said.