COWRA GUARDIAN

The front page story published on Monday, August 24, 2015 "Dropping penalty rates won't open any doors", raised several points of view but I do not believe that the real issues were addressed.

Clearly the most successful retail businesses in Australia and for that matter in Cowra all trade seven days a week. Let me use, Aldi, Bunnings, Coles, McDonalds, Target, Woolworths as examples, further local entities are the coffee shops attached to the Japanese Gardens and the Information Bureau also open seven days and receive patronage.

I am regularly asked by visitors to the town of Cowra, on a Sunday when I am at a business in Kendal Street that is open, where they can purchase a wide range of goods or services. In most cases those successful business I have already mentioned were the only ones that were open and able to make an incremental sale.

The most important issue for a business, is how to spread its fixed expenses, like rent, insurance, rates and taxes, advertising etc. These expenses remain even if the business does not open. If these expenses are spread over seven days rather than five or six days, then the actual cost of trading on any given day is reduced.

It must be acknowledged that penalty rates of pay that apply outside the traditional trading hours are a higher hourly rate than at other times and are a real increase in cost on those days against the sales achieved on those days.

Let me use entities such as the Golf Club or Bowling Club, as another example of the impact of penalty rates of pay on weekends. These enterprises can only expect to make their highest level of sales at weekends, because most of their members are employed on other days and cannot be customers on the days when penalty rates do not apply, so the majority of their sales incur a higher ratio of wages expense.

In my opinion, penalty rates of pay are a detriment to increased trading days and trading hours, and employment, but if businesses were open additional hours or days they must surely increase sales. They would also need to employ additional people, who would then have disposable income to spend in the town.

Society is now accustomed to the convenience and flexibility of being able to do business when it suits their needs, and they make many purchases on impulse.

If your business is not open you will not get those sales. It follows that the successful businesses, are the ones that trade seven days a week.

So let's get rid of penalty rates of pay and encourage more business to open on additional days and give the service to the community that they expect.

If we want to be successful in promoting the town of Cowra as a place to visit, we must be open for business to capture the visitor's interest and the incremental sales.

Lester Black, Cowra, NSW