Woolworths Says Strike by 1,500 Workers Won’t Disrupt Christmas

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The shelves and freezers in Woolworths’ supermarkets across Australia will be bare in the lead-up to Christmas, the United Workers Union warns, while supermarket bosses say it will be business as normal.

Up to 1,500 workers at three distribution centres in Victoria and another in New South Wales (NSW) continue their strike, which began on Nov. 21.

The striking warehouse workers, who are a part of Primary Connect, a Woolworths subsidiary, are calling for equal pay and conditions across all distribution centres.

The union says that while the supermarket’s profits continue to increase, wages have not, so it demands an annual pay increase of between 10 and 12.5 percent, and a minimum pay rate of $38 per hour in the first year of a new workplace agreement.

“Workers at Woolworths need a proportionate wage increase to deal with the cost pressures they face,” the union’s National Secretary Tim Kennedy said.

Primary Connect said it has already put forward pay offers that were above local market rates, inflation, and the award.

The supermarket’s suppliers also say they have plans in place to ensure it will not impact fresh fruit and vegetable stock in stores, which the affected warehouses do not handle.

Time Constraints

Workers have also raised concerns about the company’s performance framework, which ranks employees on task completion times out of 100, depending on whether they completed a given task within a time limit.

Melbourne worker Tim Seiuli, who has been a packer for 16 years, says the performance framework at distribution warehouses is “really unsafe.”

“We do this every day, day in and day out, we can see [the] unsafe practices people have to take to reach the target,” he said.

Seiuli vowed to continue striking until a fair agreement is reached.

“We’re willing to take it all the way,” he said.

However, Primary Connect claims the performance framework is there to monitor how long it takes to move products rather than to watch its staff.

A spokesperson for the company said expectations were based on “the time it should take a person with reasonable skill, applying reasonable effort, working at a safe and conscientious pace, that can be maintained for the duration of a shift, to complete a task.”

Union, Woolworths At Odds Over Impact

The union’s Logistics Director in Melbourne, Dario Mujkic, said workers will strike around the clock until an agreement is reached, predicting this will quickly lead to shortages.

“When one warehouse takes strike action, we start to see empty shelves in Woolworths supermarkets ... this is five warehouses,” he said. “We will start to see bare shelves of liquor, frozen and refrigerated goods ... pretty quickly.”

However, Woolworths claims it has extensive contingency plans to ensure stock levels remain steady. These include stockpiling goods, redistributing supplies from unaffected warehouses, and relying on its network of 20 other distribution centres in NSW and Victoria.

“Maintaining supply for customers is our priority in the lead-up to Christmas,” the spokesperson said.

One of the warehouses in Victoria reportedly stocks liquor, while other regional centres handle non-perishables such as chips and paper towels.

AAP contributed to this report