Of course the author ignores the unequal bargaining power between employers and most employees who benefit from penalty rates. The whole point of awards is to protect just those workers. Maybe penalty rates can be taken out of awards for employees who are paid more than 50% above average weekly earnings, but they should be retained for everyone else.

Two dollars a day should be fine.

"Only with respect to public holidays can a strong “social” argument be made for the retention of penalty rates. Public holidays are built around the idea of promoting common leisure time, and thus employers are discouraged from operating on such days. Nevertheless, even here the case has been weakened by the wavering community support for some public holidays (for instance, the Queen’s Birthday and, dare I say it, Labour Day)."

Ah yes, Labour Day, or Eight Hour Day, as it used to be known. "8 hours work, 8 hours sleep, 8 hours play" (recreation). We might as well can that holiday, or should we keep it as a memorial day for the death of workers' rights? Let Gina decide.

Like many professionals, it seems that Mark has the illusion that negotiation of wages between employer and employee is normal. It is not. What is normal, is employers imposing whaetver they can get away with, not on an individual basis, but on workers as anonymous groups. To claim that

"Ultimately, wage determination is best left to employers and workers (and their unions) to determine on a case-by-case basis through bargaining" is to deny the day to day reality of most workers lives, and the power they have available in a negotiation.

The penalty rates system is a massively flawed and ugly solution; but one which goes some way to redressing the balance of power.

Every comment so far is 'on the money', but for me, the most obvious reason for penalty rates is that there are a huge number of governments and businesses that only operate nine to five Monday to Friday. To me, it would not matter one iota what days my weekends were if ALL services were available at ALL times.
But then there is the problem of organized sport, bowls in my case. Another poser to think about.

Penalty rates encourage the system to generally focus community work/activity to a period of the week that enables us to live a balanced existence with our families and friends on evenings and weekends. I am starting to sound old-fashoned here, but that is the kind of community I want to live in.

I am an emergency worker and know that society needs me to work out of hours, on call etc. But I generally don't mind because the current penalty rates focus most hospital activity during sociable hours, attempting to achieve some sort of balance. One thing I have learned over the years is that our system is driven by financial considerations. Incentives and sticks (penalties) help to guide a complex system in the direction that we as a society want it to go.

These articles always tend to be written in terms of of the anonymous 'they' who will have to work on weekends without penalty rates. The author is never going to have to do such a thing. The politicians who would like to propose such things would never dream of introducing 'Weekend Government' where parliament has to sit all weekend too.

Penalty rates should apply because the time on a weekend is very much more valuable than time during the week. Remember it is only on the weekends that children get time off school. Working on a weekend denies you and your family of shared time at the park, on the beach, and with friends at barbecues. You cannot support your children at their sporting events or other weekend activities.

Having a day off work on Monday is no use, your children are back at school.

Be careful of what you wish for . . . a benefit of penalty rates for retailers is that they funnel demand and costs into a shorter time period, and as a result reduce total costs. Another benefit is that higher costs drive efficiency and innovation.

Dropping penalty rates only works if we assume it is our children who are affected and no parent or adult is involved in the economic exchange where they have competing priorities (that includes dropping children off and picking them up. . . and there is more than one child involved).

I would suggest that we live in a modern and advanced society that enjoys socializing outside of normal working hours. therefore we should be handsomely compensated for sacrificing our social time.
The labor market, like other markets, is an imperfect market (employers have an advantage over employees) and the government has to control it.
The people who sacrifice their leisure (outside of normal working hours) do so out of dedication or necessity. Ether way, they should be adequately rewarded for their sacrifices.
The present system of penalty weighting seems to have stood the test of time and worked very well so far and until someone can come up with a better system with rational justifications it should stand.
Manufacturers generally aim to achieve their production targets in ordinary hours and utilize overtime to meet production targets when they get behind.
Any entrepreneur (including retailers) who finds it uneconomical to pay overtime should compete in a different market segment.

The only explanation for this article is that Mark Wooden is a Gina Rinehart troll account.

Treating the symptoms much? So we have a society that expects 24/7 consumer services. Let them pay for the convenience. Personally I'd rather see no business conducted outside of standard hours than to penalise those who fuel our 24/7 nonsense. Either buy Milk before the stores close and cook your own Sunday roast or be happy to hand over extra dollars for the privileged of others doing it for you in their 'leisure time'.

Am not sure the author of this article or 'fluff piece' or testing the waters for bigger things to come, HAS actually been a real worker? Has he been to centrelink as a punter, filled in a Jobs Network Return to Work plan in anger. Witnessed an under acheiving Employment Consultant wave the 'Take the job its a job' stick in his face or look forward to a chat with Centrelink with a view to having ones benefits being reduced by 18%... I doubt it.

Academia is a great source of economic bunkum at times and this is no different.

The author, as several have already commented, seems to believe employees are in a better position to negotiate their own arangements, when the reallty is 180 degrees in the opposite direction. Sign it or leave, accept less hours, less money or leave, plenty more want your job and will accept less...and after 6 months of flogging themselves, (after months of job interviews and knockbacks, prior to accepting the job) they too will leave and another will take their place.

Frankly, am disappointed in the article and the direction it takes. its an opinion piece to test the responsiveness of the electorate and the likelyhood of more employee based wage and contract negotiations in the coming years.