Obviously i should have gone into more detail.wrxsti said:if you didnt work that week...no they dont take anything out of your pay, FFS its $4 man, and you never know what will happen down the road, just be safe and again FFS its $4 from your weekly wage.
I work at liquorland (not coles supermarkets itself) so this is from the store point of view (remember still owned by coles and comes under the same union).
First point
If i have a 8 hour shift, i am allowed to have one break (after 6 hrs)*. In my case, if i take the break, i get 30 minutes less pay. If i don't take the break (with managers approval), the last 2 hours is payed at 1.5 pay. So to me, in a particularly easy job, Id rather have "1 extra hours" worth of pay than to sit on my ass for 30 min doing shit all.
But if you want to do the latter, if you are a member of the union, you will be told you are not allowed to do that. And the union will give your manager shit if they see "overtime no break" on your payslip.
*Changes from store to store.
Second point, Last year the union went into Headoffice looking for a 25% payrise for all liquorland employees. Coles was able to bargain them down to just a 3% increase, over 3 years. For me on a part time pay that "payrise" is about 15c an hour - i.e. nothing. Wow im glad to know my $4-10 straight out of my pay is going somewhere.
Thirdly (as mentioned before)
Unions are useful in the pre 90's era, and in an industrial workplace. But a big company like coles/wollies etc has to much to lose to fuk its employers over