The supermarket giant has increased pressure on employees with a new framework that warehouse staff describe as ‘bullying’ and unsafe
When he arrives at work, he puts on a headset that tells him where to go, what items he needs to take from the shelves and pack and how long it should take him to do it. All the while, the company measures his productivity and pushes him to go faster.
Tim, who is over 60, said he was pushed to improve his rating. He got it to more than 80%, then 90%, then 100%, he said, but in his effort to work harder, faster, he was injured. “As the country’s largest private sector employer, we are committed to ensuring that our workplaces are safe and productive for our teams and customers,” she said.Work in a Woolworths warehouse can be relentlessly physical: stacking products and boxes that can weigh up to 18kg on to pallets, wrapping them and getting it all into trucks. Much of this is timed.
As more people shop online, there’s been growing attention to the treatment and tracking of workers in warehouses run by e-commerce conglomerates like Amazon. In June, the state of Californiafor failing to properly disclose its productivity targets to workers – a decision the company is reportedly appealing. But Australian warehouse workers have long been subject to this style of control.
The new “Coaching and Productivity Framework” included “Glidepath”, a new “timeline” to push workers to improve and reach 100% performance, according to documents seen by Guardian Australia. If they didn’t meet the required targets and there were no mitigating factors, the worker would be “counselled and may be disciplined”.
The framework documents say that the engineered standards have not changed, but according to the UWU’s research and policy officer Lauren Kelly it represents “a sharp break” from how they were enforced as recently as last year. The recent push for 100% led to injuries as well as mental stress, workers say. “These people go a bit harder and those little niggles that they’re managing are now injuries,” Tim said. “It’s just pressure, pressure, pressure.”
“If they’re sending me to salvage or maybe manual pick … I’m scared that I’m going to be feeling pain after I finish work.”Some workers leave because of the pressure. Jake* worked at a Woolworths distribution centre in Perth about three years ago, via a labour hire firm. He was a pick-packer, and even then he felt the engineered standards were often unrealistic.
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