Workers will picket a Fair Work Commission hearing on Friday over a new enterprise agreement proposed by a Canberra club, union officials have said.
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Southern Cross Club staff recently voted 73 per cent to 27 per cent in favour of a new agreement under which annualised staff would be 20 per cent better off, chief executive Ian Mackay said.
However United Voice secretary Lyndal Ryan said workers only voted in favour of the agreement because it was "misleading".
Ms Ryan said the club "slipped" in a provision which would drop staff from the Clubs Award onto the lower Hospitality Award, if a Clubs Australia bid to abolish the Clubs Award succeeded.
She also said the club planned to remove penalty rates prematurely under the new agreement, the first club in Australia to do so ahead of Clubs Australia's attempt to get rid of the award.
However Mr Mackay said they had to include the provisions about the Hospitality Award and penalty rates because of the uncertainty about the future of the Clubs Award and penalty rates overall.
He said their agreement would protect workers' penalty rates for at least 12 months.
But Mr Mackay confirmed the club would not continue to pay penalty rates over the award if other clubs did not.
"To enshrine paying two-and-a-half times on a public holiday and every other club being at the award would make us very uncompetitive," Mr Mackay said.
"If everyone is paying two-and-a-half times on a public holiday and double on Sundays that's fine by us. We're not against penalty rates [but] we can't in the long term be in a position where we are paying $50 per hour for a barista on a public holiday where our competitor down the road is paying $40 for a barista on a public holiday. We can't compete."
The Fair Work Commission will hear evidence on Friday from both the union and the club and will rule on whether staff will be better off under the proposed enterprise agreement.
A statement from United Voice said clubs workers from across the ACT would protest against Southern Cross Club's move to "cut weekend and public holiday penalty rates" outside the Fair Work Commission.
Ms Ryan said if Fair Work ruled in favour of the Southern Cross Club, it would set a dangerous precedent for other clubs.
"We think clubs that hold themselves up as virtuous and community bastions should start making a decent commitment to those workers who don't deserve to have their wages cut," Ms Ryan said.
Figures provided by the union suggest the Southern Cross Club made more than $1 million in total profits in 2015-16.
Mr Mackay said as clubs moved away from gaming, they were unable to absorb the cost of penalty rates if their competition was not paying them.
"We've started to run cafes and fish and chip shops and the like and when you're running a cafe, you're competing with another cafe down the road and if you are ... paying literally double and a half and the cafe down the road is paying $10 to $15 less, it's impossible to be competitive," he said.
