This report (Lowering the standards: From Awards to Work Choices in Retail and Hospitality Collective Agreement) discusses the results of a study which examines how enforceable rights for employees have changed under Work Choices.

A team of over 20 Researchers examined every collective agreement lodged federally between 26 March and 8 December 2006 in two industries where large numbers of workers were previously dependent on awards. Agreements were selected from the retail and hospitality industries, covering enterprises in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. They were compared with the awards and agreements that had previously (prior to Work Choices) covered the employees of these workplaces. There are 339 Work Choices agreements in the study compared back to 70 previous instruments.

The report states that: 

"The majority of Agreements studied have discarded entitlements or had them reduced under Work Choices. While there has been an increased incidence of some provisions and some minor improvements in a small number of entitlements, these gains are far outweighed by the losses. There has been publicity about the loss of loadings and penalty rates (‘protected’ matters) for employees on AWAs. This study provides evidence that the loss of protected Award matters is also overwhelmingly the case in non-union collective agreements."

The report can be downloaded from: http://www.wrc.org.au/O01P002/A01/V01/_Assets/_Documents/Final_sythnseis_report_13_Sept_2007.pdf.