'Underpaid, understaffed and undervalued': Canterbury Woolworths workers strike

Canterbury Woolworths supermarket workers joined thousands nationally who walked off the job for two hours on Tuesday.

‘‘Underpaid, understaffed and undervalued,’’ said many of the signs at a protest in Amberley as Woolworths supermarket workers voted to stage their first ever national withdrawal of labour after 96 per cent of FIRST Union members responded to a weekend strike ballot.

Outside Amberley’s Woolworths supermarket, FIRST Union delegate Mark Humphreys says the Progressive Foods company, the Australian owners of Woolworths, don’t seem to care about their staff.

‘‘We are worried about our pay and understaffing issues here, we have staff here who spend their entire working shift on their own with no support because of staff shortages.’’

Mr Humphreys was one of a number of Amberley staff who stood for two hours outside the supermarkets car park on State HIghway 1 in Amberley, protesting the lack of support from the company on Tuesday.

Staff were joined by Woolworths staff from other North Canterbury branches.

Rudd Hughes, FIRST Union national secretary for retail and finance, says they’ve been in negotiations for over 13 days with Woolworths and sought a fair deal for their workers but they’re still miles apart from the company on the most basic issues of all - pay, safety and staffing.

‘‘Woolworths have offered minimal wage increases below the rising household cost of living, sought reductions to workers’ existing employment conditions, and proposed pay rates that are falling behind their competitors.

‘‘They are one half of a duopoly that dominates our domestic food market and has churned out more than $1bn in dividends to Woolworths shareholders in the last 5 years. A lack of money is not the issue here - it’s a lack of will, and a lack of ambition.’’

He says raising safe staffing standards with Woolworths seems like an inconvenience rather than an opportunity to deter rising levels of abuse and theft by customers.

‘‘They’re trying to deal with increasing violence against staff but will not address the number of people working in stores.

‘‘Workers are left feeling that protecting previous profit levels is more important to Woolworths than protecting workers in stores.

‘‘Their solution to systemic understaffing is a nebulous project of ‘multiskilling’ workers rather than increasing the actual number of people working on shop floors during busy hours, nights and weekends. It’s disingenuous.’’

Mr Humphreys says: ‘‘As a supervisor I can turn up for work expecting to do my job and instead find myself assigned to work in a completely different department, because of their desire to multi-skill coupled to staff shortages.’’

FIRST Union represents approximately 10,000 Woolworths retail supermarket workers in 190 stores around New Zealand, and many more in distribution centres and customer support jobs who are not part of Tuesdays strike action.

FIRST Union's June 2024 survey of supermarket workers showed that 90.8 per cent of respondents said their stores were understaffed, either ‘‘sometimes’’ (36.2 per cent) ‘‘regularly’’ (30 per cent) or ‘‘continuously’’ (24.7 per cent). 39 per cent of workers identified understaffing as the ‘‘single most important workplace issue for supermarket workers’’.