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Subway Zombie Agreements

The SDA is committed to improving the wages and working conditions of workers at Subway restaurants.

Currently, Zombie Agreements are one of the biggest contributing factors to some Subway workers being paid less than the minimum entitlements in the Fast Food Industry Award.

Under some of these Agreements workers could be losing more than $100 per four hour shift.

There are over 353 different Subway Agreements in operation around Australia, with most Agreements operating past their nominal expiry date.

We need your help to terminate these Zombie Agreements.

Apply to terminate your Agreement

Terminate your Zombie Agreement

A Zombie Agreement is a workplace instrument that is past its nominal expiry date but continue to operate as they have not been terminated or replaced by another Agreement.

This means that the wages and conditions of workers remains as per the agreement and do not improve as changes occur to the modern awards.

This can leave workers substantially worse off than if they were employed under their industry’s Award (legal minimum entitlements).

An example of this would be the penalty rate structures in most Subway Zombie Agreements.

Here, the Zombie Agreements may not afford workers the penalty rates on shifts after 10pm on weeknights, Saturdays, Sundays or Public Holidays leaving them worse off.

Other entitlements that workers may miss out on in these zombie agreements are laundry allowances, overtime rates, casual penalty rates or uniform allowances.

This is possible because under current industrial laws the employer only needs to ensure that the base rate in the expired agreement keeps up with the minimum prescribed by the Fast Food Industry Award (FFIA).

 

A recently terminated Subway Zombie Agreement did not afford workers weekend or public holiday penalty rates.

Whilst the Agreement did pay the minimum amount for hours of work between 6am to 10pm, there was a substantial gap between what a worker would have been paid for penalty rate shifts under their Award compared to the Zombie Agreement.

The example below shows the discrepancy between a level 1 permanent part-time worker’s pay under the Zombie Agreement and what it would be under the FFIA rates:

4 hour Saturday shift:

Zombie Agreement: $89.32 (4 x 22.33)

Fast Food Industry Award: $111.64 (4 x $27.91)

Zombie Agreement worker is losing $22.32 per Saturday shift.

4 hour Sunday shift:

Zombie Agreement: $89.32 (4 x 22.33)

Fast Food Industry Award: $111.64 (4 x $27.91)

Zombie Agreement worker is losing $22.32 per Sunday shift.

4 hour public holiday shift:

Zombie Agreement: $89.32 (4 x 22.33)

Fast Food Industry Award: $200.96 (4 x $50.24)

Zombie Agreement worker is losing $111.64 per public holiday shift .

A Zombie agreement can only be terminated by an application to the Fair Work Commission by one of three people:

  1. An employer covered by the agreement (your boss)
  2. An employee covered by the agreement (a current worker)
  3. A union covered by the agreement

As the SDA was not involved in the process of creating these agreements, we cannot apply to terminate them on our own as we are not covered by the agreement.

The substantial savings that a business makes in wages under these agreements means that your Boss is unlikely to make an application to terminate them.

So that just leaves the worker.

I want to make an application to terminate a Zombie Agreement

The SDA will provide support to any subway worker who wishes to apply to terminate a Zombie Agreement in their workplace.

By filling out the form above, you will provide us with the information required to start an application with the Fair Work Commission to remove these Agreements that are paying you less than the award.

It will help you to fill out the form if you have access to a copy of your most recent pay slip.

By filling out this form not only will you be improving your own pay at work, but you will be improving the pay of all employees in your workplace.

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