The National Retail Association CEO Dominique Lamb is calling on retailers to take part in a survey to detail the impacts of COVID-19 on their business.
Lamb is encouraging this action to support the organisation's position that the Fair Work's annual wage review should be deferred until the impacts from COVID-19 are clearly understood and more normal trading conditions return.
Lamb said that a wage review now will only induce more trauma and stress.
"In late March the NRA made the first of its submissions to the Fair Work Commission’s Annual Wage Review panel which increases minimum Award wages each year.
"We called for the annual wage review to be deferred, saying now was not the time to be thinking about increasing the cost of employing people.
"In this environment, retail business owners cannot possibly absorb a wage increase.
"Indeed, even the consideration of increasing wages at this point is merely adding more trauma and stress to what is already an extraordinarily difficult business environment for many small operators," she said.
Lamb added that while the ABS' statistics for retail appear positive, the numbers are heavily swayed by panic buying at supermarkets.
"The recent ABS statistics show a massive rise in retail sales across March but we know this is not the experience of the majority of our members and is skewed by the panic buying that occurred in the grocery sector.
"We need the data from our members to help support our further submission that the annual wage review should be deferred until such time as we have reliable data to help inform the impact of COVID-19 on our economy," she said.
Access the NRA's survey here.