Woolworths attacks transport drivers

Vanguard March 2013 p. 8
Marcus H.

Retail giant Woolworths Limited has launched a bitter assault on workers in recent times, as the corporation attempts to maintain the edge over rivals Westfarmers and Aldi.

The latest attack on workers was announced by Woolworths on February 7^th, with the company confirming that the entire Victorian fleet of 200 drivers would be made redundant in April. This announcement was delivered just one week after the company had reported a first half year sales increase of $1.4 billion from the previous year.

The Woolworths transport fleet in Victoria will be outsourced to logistics and warehousing giant Linfox, with Woolworths confirming the decision; “this change will bring a consistent transport approach nationally, and allow Woolworths to focus on the core business of retailing.” This statement from a company spokesperson is of great concern, with distribution centre workers fearing that they will be the next group of workers to be culled, with the outsourcing of the transport division across Australia now complete.

The drivers, members of the Transport Workers Union, have achieved the highest industry conditions through their unity across the years, through well negotiated agreements, without the need for industrial action. These job losses are a massive kick in the guts to the loyal workforce, most of whom have given twenty years’ service.

The outsourcing model has been one all too well known in the logistics industry over the previous five years, with the employer shifting the risk onto companies carrying the contract.

Woolworths will attempt to re-deploy the sacked drivers into other parts of the company; on the back of recent form from the company this will no doubt equate to casual employment, at a time when this country faces a casualisation crisis, with more than 40% of workers in Australia placed in this form of insecure, precarious employment.

One of this country’s largest corporations, Woolworths should be taking a leading role in addressing the jobs crisis, and providing secure jobs that Australians can count on, to provide secure lives, and secure futures.

Rather, the ruthless company in which profit and productivity reign over any consideration of people, has chosen to follow the casualisation agenda set down by the industry groups and government in an attempt to claw back hard fought wages and conditions in order to maximise their ever increasing profits.

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Just weeks before Christmas, the company was found attacking worker’s rights yet again, on this occasion engaging a labour hire agency to undercut the Enterprise Agreement rate of pay for casual workers at the Brisbane Liquor Distribution Centre, located in Larapinta.

This amounts to another severe blow for those ever increasing employees employed as casuals, already placed in insecure jobs, unclear whether there will be work tomorrow or next week, and unable to provide any security for their families, unable to obtain finance for home loans.

Woolworths has attempted to engage these casual workers at a rate of five dollars an hour less than directly employed workers, despite these new casuals performing exactly the same work functions.

The cold blooded decision is in direct conflict with a memorandum of understanding signed off by company bosses and State Secretaries of the National Union of Workers, which was underpinned by this clause; “in line with our practice of paying people fairly and equitably, our practice of paying the same terms and conditions to contract casuals as to Woolworths casuals will continue”

The Union is now waged in a battle with Woolworths to adhere to this basic agreement, and to honour the Enterprise Agreement which was negotiated fairly between the union and company.

In the attack of workers’ rights, the overcrowding of labour hire agencies within the industry, and the casualisation of jobs, now is the time for workers, whether they be employed in a permanent or casual capacity, to stand united on the job against the assault by the capitalists in order to reverse the trend of the previous thirty years, at which point in 2013, we see the rate of casualisation at every one in four workers employed in insecure jobs.