SHOCK, horror! Customers at the Woolworths supermarket in Cowes on Phillip Island were confronted with empty shelves on Tuesday night this week where the popular Smiths Snack Food Twisties used to sit.
You could still get the party pack (270g) of Chicken Twisties, but come on! No one wants that!
Of course, the strike by more than 1500 UWU members that has been running since November 21 has got a lot more serious than that.
Earlier in the day on Tuesday, December 3, Woolworths Group (WOW) revealed to the stock exchange that the disruption had already cost $50 million in food sales and counting.
It was noticeable at Cowes that while there were many gaps on the shelves where cereal boxes had been pushed to the front, one packet deep, yoghurt stocks were way down, toilet paper, and long life milk to name a few; there were also fewer customers in the aisle.
And there’s apparently no end in sight.
The Woolworths Group today provided an update on the ongoing industrial action in relation to the enterprise agreements at three distribution centres in Victoria and one distribution centre in NSW. Woolworths Group say they have been engaging in good faith in negotiations with the United Workers Union (UWU) for over four months but that the UWU negotiations remain unresolved.
The UWU commenced their indefinite strike action at the four sites on November 21, with the strike action now extending to 12 days. The UWU is seeking pay increases at these sites in excess of 25% over three years, materially above inflation, at a time, they say, when Woolworths Group is trying to keep food and groceries affordable for customers facing ongoing cost-of-living pressures.
“The UWU is also demanding there be ‘no enforceable performance standard or rate’ which would preclude Woolworths Group’s ability to manage productivity,” Woolworths said in a statement on Tuesday.
The union wants Woolworths to scrap new productivity rules that would discipline employees for not working fast enough.
UWU national secretary Tim Kennedy said the union and the company were still locked in negotiations to resolve the strike. Mr Kennedy said pay rates should rise to match higher living costs, and workers should not be treated like robots and penalised if they did not meet task-specific time frames.
“Business groups may well come out and support the dangerous, inhumane and unsafe productivity framework, but you can bet they are not being marked out of 100 in real-time every time they perform a task,” he said.
Despite not all the workers striking, Woolworths has formally stood down the rest of the workforce without pay on the basis there is not enough staff to be “usefully employed”.
The Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association, which represents a minority of members and is not striking, is taking Woolworths to the commission on Wednesday to challenge the stand-downs at all three sites.
The shortages at stores spread from Woolworths to a second ASX-listed group, Endeavour, which operates Dan Murphy’s and BWS bottle shops. Having demerged from Woolworths in 2021, some of Endeavour’s stores are still supplied through the supermarket group’s distribution centres.
The company sought to re-open its key Dandenong centre on Monday, claiming 72 per cent of its workforce wanted to return. However, a union picket blocked site entry points with cars and protesters.
“Until the industrial action is resolved, a further impact to sales is expected. The full financial impact at this stage is unknown,” Woolworths said in a statement to the ASX.
“It will be dependent on the duration and extent of the ongoing industrial action across the affected sites, and the time taken to rebuild inventory ahead of the Christmas trading period.”
Woolworths Group CEO, Amanda Bardwell said: “We sincerely apologise to all of our customers for the inconvenience caused by the inconsistency of supply across some product lines in some of our stores in Victoria, southern NSW and ACT. We are working hard to try and improve the situation and would like to thank our customers for their understanding and for treating our teams with respect.”
