Warehouse job cuts: 'I'm angry' - Jacinda Ardern

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is "angry" at proposed job losses at The Warehouse chain.

More than 1000 jobs may go in a restructure The Warehouse Group said had been accelerated by Covid-19.

• This story was first published by RNZ

Closures are confirmed for The Warehouse store in Birkenhead and Noel Leeming stores in Papanui and at The Palms in Christchurch.

Another six stores may close - Noel Leeming in Henderson and Tokoroa, The Warehouse stores in Whangaparaoa, Johnsonsville and Dunedin Central, and Warehouse Stationery in Te Awamutu. The company has received money under the government's wage subsidy scheme.

"I'm angry, if I'm speaking frankly," Ardern told Morning Report.

"At the moment I'm getting hundreds of letters from small-business owners who are giving up everything to try and keep their staff on.

"They are running down whatever reserves they had. They're prioritising trying to keep their business afloat but also trying to keep their people on because that's what they've prioritised.

"The government of course and taxpayers are taking a huge hit because we are prioritising trying to keep as many businesses and individuals employed and up and running as we can.

"I'd like to see the same attitude applied by some of our large organisations in New Zealand."

Ardern said she was aware the company had been restructuring and if that was the reason for job losses, they should give that as a reason.

'I will be struggling'

A worker made redundant from the Warehouse fears she will struggle to find another job when the Birkenhead store closes next month.

Sole parent Ana Gray has been made redundant after more than 10 years at the Birkenhead store.

"It's going to be really hard. I can tell you now I will be struggling to get through it."

"The redundancy money, it's going to be there, but it's not going to last.

"With Covid-19 and a lot of people losing jobs other places it's hard to look somewhere else."

Gray, in her late 50s, said if any job did come up at The Warehouse she would have to reapply, and though she planned to look elsewhere she feared companies would not take on older workers.

"I've got all the experience with customer service and all that but they're going to look at my age and then they say well who wants to hire someone who's actually over 50 for this position, because they're going to look at the young ones.

"There's nothing there - everyone else is losing their jobs. It's going to be really hard.

Her union had been supportive and was contacting other companies in an effort to find jobs, she said.

Warehouse boss denies poor communication over job cuts

Meanwhile chief executive Nick Grayston  says First Union is being "liberal with the truth" in claiming some of the 1000 workers facing the chop found out via social media. The union says that's "bullshit".

"Agile is a business operating mechanism that replaces the hierarchical command and control mechanism that's already been around for over 100 years," chief executive Nick Grayston told Checkpoint.

"It's all about being firstly very customer-focused, secondly, becoming much more efficient, nimble and faster executing… Companies that have gone agile, they report in a minimum of about 30 percent improvement in employee engagement."

Grayston said the vast majority of the redundancies would be in the red stores. "In total, it could be up to 540 full-time equivalents. That 1080 number includes a lot of part-timers."

He said the company's ability to re-roster and redeploy people was "restricted" by the staff collective agreement.

"It's about being able to serve our customers better. We see the business changing as a result of more business going online. And so having people there to serve customers how they need to be served, making sure we've got people on the registers at the time that people are shopping rather than where they were rostered historically."

Consultation with staff facing redundancy had not happened yet, Grayston said.

"I have been in the office today and as you can appreciate with social distancing and still being at level 2, we're having to structure how people come to the office. I've been in touch with the whole company by video today to announce these changes.

"There are six stores that we're going into consultation about closure. We consulted with Birkenhead, and that one is now confirmed.

"We consulted first and after the conclusion of that consultation we gave notice," Grayston told Checkpoint, but notice had not been given yet on any other stores.

FIRST Union national co-ordinator for The Warehouse Kate Davis told Checkpoint she was incensed about how Grayston had handled the matter.

"I've spoken to a customer just in tears. Today I've been talking to workers pretty much all day. They're devastated," Davis said.

"The hardest part of this was calling a worker to see if she would do media, to find out that she hadn't been told.

”I broke the news to her she did not know and this is at 1pm. Other workers online have got in touch with me to say that they found out on social media."

In response to Grayston's claim there had been a period of consultation, Davis said: "Would they have a timeline for that and would they like to supply it perhaps to me and the workers?"

"We never like doing this, as I said," Grayston told Checkpoint.

"We are a chain of about 258 stores, we continually assess our store network and its appropriateness to be able to serve our customers, and to work within a viable operating model," he said.

"There's a lot of aggressive overseas competition both in the digital sense and in terms of overseas competition coming. And so in order to better protect the rump of our business and make sure that we're still able to provide value for New Zealanders, we will need to make sure we manage our costs appropriately going forward."

In response to the complaint that staff were not notified properly, Grayston accused the union of being "liberal with the truth", and said regional managers were tasked with informing the stores, but he would check.

"They were [informed], I'm told, in store at the time."

"Bulls--t," First Union's Davis said. "We're not being liberal with the truth, we're doing what we do and ... standing up for our workers. In the case of Birkenhead, they asked 50 workers for feedback on the day they gave notice to the landlord.

"I'm not being liberal with the truth, I'm repeating what happened. And that was answered by five of the management saying that they cared about the staff, and they cared about the feedback, when that's transparently not true."

The Warehouse Group has claimed $68 million in wage subsidies, which has enabled the company to keep people employed during lockdown, Grayston said.

The company did not intend to make a claim in the second round of subsidies, he said.

Davis said she was questioning whether more stores owned by The Warehouse Group would be closed across New Zealand.

"They made $70 million last year, they've just had $50 million in subsidy," Davis said.

She also criticised the closure of stores in regional New Zealand.

"They've said that it's the bottom performing stores. Can they supply us with a list of the stores and how they rank? Because again, that might be quite helpful. What does that mean in a town like [Te Awamutu] when there is no other work and Bunnings have just pulled out? It means your whole life is disrupted.

"When it comes to Bunnings, if they want to pull out of the regions there's not a lot we can do about that, but New Zealanders should be appalled and they should be angry that The Warehouse is pulling out of provinces or the regions at a time like this.

"Nick Grayston is not being a team of five million. He is being a person who puts profit and greed before need.

"If I had to pick who was made redundant it wouldn't be the workers. It would be Nick Grayston and his comms team, if they think that what they have done today is anywhere near good enough."