Woolworths profits up, while workers face the sack

Marcus H

Warehouse workers have vowed to fight, following an announcement by retail giant Woolworths that it plans to vacate its Broadmeadows facility (above) by 2018.


The workers, members of the National Union of Workers, supply more than two hundred supermarkets across suburban Melbourne and regional Victoria. Through relentless struggle, the Hume Distribution Centre workers are the highest paid store people across Woolworth’s twenty distribution facilities in Australia, with some of the best conditions in the logistics industry.


The workers at the Hume Distribution Centre in Melbourne’s northern suburbs were summoned by management to a meeting on Tuesday June 9th. What followed was the disappointing announcement that the corporation would relocate its major Victorian distribution centre to an automated warehouse in Melbourne’s south eastern suburbs, effectively leaving 700 workers out of employment by the anticipated closure in 2018. The location of the new distribution centre have not been revealed by management.


The workers have responded by preparing to wage a campaign to save the jobs and prevent their Broadmeadows workplace from closing. Many of the workers have been employed at the centre since the opening in 1999.The State member for Broadmeadows, Frank McGuire, was contacted but has not yet responded.


In 2014 Woolworths announced a record profit of $2.45 billion, up from $2.3 billion in 2013, of which the Broadmeadows workers have played a crucial role in producing, given the volume that is distributed out of the centre.


The announcement of the planned closure of the Broadmeadows distribution centre sees Woolworths turning its back on the communities of the northern suburbs of Melbourne, where it has operated warehouses for fifty years. 


The announcement is yet the latest devastating blow to the Broadmeadows community, decimated by factory closures and job losses over the last five years. The Ford Motor Company will close the doors on its Broadmeadows production line by the end of 2016, bringing to an end 57 years of skilled and secure employment for Melbourne’s north and leaving a further 600 people out of work.


In the same week as the Woolworths decision, management of Austube Mills in neighbouring Somerton, made the announcement that 86 steel manufacturing workers would be retrenched by the end of August, with the company to leave Victoria in November.


Given the job losses in the region and the casualization crisis which has gripped this country, to the point that nearly half of Australian workers are placed in insecure work, workers understand the importance of the fight to save the Hume Distribution Centre.