The Morrison Government persists in attacking your superannuation. While there may be some merit in parts of the proposed legislation, for example trying to address the issue of multiple superannuation accounts and underperformance, the legislation as drafted will not deliver these goals and will instead negatively impact you and your superannuation.
Some of our key concerns include:
- The government’s insistence to ‘staple’ superannuation before addressing the underperformance issues, which means some members might end up being ‘stapled’ to a poor performing fund (modelling shows this has the potential to cost a member $100,000s over their working lives);
- A provision that gives the government the power to order funds not to invest in certain ways, even if those investments are in members’ best financial interests, or prohibit certain expenditure like advertising and other marketing activity; and
- The proposed performance test is not a fair comparison as it only includes investment fees, not admin fees, which means retail funds can continue to charge high admin fees.
We’re working with Aware Super, the superannuation fund for health care workers, and the broader union movement to seek critical changes to the proposed legislation to ensure that it meets its objectives without negatively impacting your superannuation.
We are receiving an increasing number of member complaints about employers who are taking a regressive approach to return-to-work provisions for members returning from maternity leave. A pattern of a very hard-line and inflexible approach to return-to-work arrangements showing no regard for the need and circumstances of those members, including aggressive demands to agree to work rotating shifts. Some employers include demands that they work night shifts. This is completely unacceptable and in breach of enterprise agreement provisions relating to return to work and flexible work arrangements which protect against such demands. This attitude takes our workplaces back to the 1970’s and ignores the progressive advances that have been achieved in the decades since.
The Union is taking a non-tolerance approach to these complaints to ensure that women returning to work from maternity leave are not being forced into accepting arrangements that deny their right to balance work and family responsibilities and are compliant with our enterprise agreements.
