Woolies warehouse workers keeping Sydney picket strong

On an average day, 200 people enter the round-the-clock Erskine Park Distribution Centre (DC) in western Sydney and bust their gut packing goods that end up in Woolworths supermarkets. But on Saturday 23 November, the two dozen in high vis turning up at the site weren’t there for the 5am morning shift. They were starting day three of an indefinite strike.

That is already a day longer than their last strike in 2017, and this time, it seems they are just getting started. The picket line looks built for long-haul, 24-hour operation: portaloos, a big box trailer of supplies, gazebos, barbecues, even a flat-screen TV powered by a generator. They are also joining five other warehouses in Victoria and Queensland.

So far, the pickets are working. One worker said that the morning truck drivers don’t come to cross the picket line; they just come to greet and support the strikers. For Woolworths—whose shelves might start running empty later this week—the screws will turn tighter the closer we get to the holiday season.

“[We don’t care] if it takes one, two, three months—even if we’re here in the New Year”, a worker, Tee,* told Red Flag in an audio interview, as chill R&B played from a nearby speaker. “And if anyone’s listening [to the recording in the future], happy New Year, merry Christmas. If you’ve got empty shelves in your local Woolies store, blame Woolies, not us.”

Almost all Erskine Park DC workers are members of the United Workers Union (UWU), and almost all voted for the indefinite strike. That sense of unity against management is a major point of pride. “I haven’t seen people in this high spirits in many, many years here”, Jamie, a UWU organiser, said. Despite the weekend’s heat wave, which could already be felt by 8am, workers kicked a ball around on the street, or crowded around a mate’s motorcycle.

The strike’s key demand, alongside higher pay, is to “abolish the framework”. Every worker seems determined to kill and bury it before they walk back inside the gates. The framework allows management to discipline any worker that fails to meet the “100 percent” target: a pick rate that the company can set and adjust with no oversight, rationale or accountability. “It’s trying to manage us for every second that we work, 24/7 non-stop”, Tee said.

At the best of times, work inside a Woolworths warehouse is rushed and strenuous. Workers on foot weave around forklifts, lay pickers and pallet movers in a mad rush to grab stock from aisles.

With management constantly forcing the pace, Jamie, who worked for years at Erskine Park, described how extreme accidents are waiting to happen. “There’s a big risk of getting hit by machinery. Someone lost their life only a year ago”, he said. “My first year on the job, I was a few inches away from being crushed by a machine myself.” But the recently introduced “framework”, Jamie said, “is gonna create chaos in there”.

The chaos is already starting. “We’ve got a lot of people that have been here for years, been doing their job perfectly fine, and now just last week, we had two people injured on Friday”, Tee said. “One of the guys had to leave in a wheelchair and they actually had to drop him home; he couldn’t go home in the vehicle he came in. On one day we’ve had more injuries than in the last couple of months.”

“Even those who can reach 100 percent, they can’t maintain it”, Jamie said. Humans cannot do what the AI program in their work-provided headset demands, such as moving 18-kilogram boxes every five seconds. “How can one person do this all day, every day? It’s 800 to 1,000 boxes per day”, another worker, Craig,* said.

At the same time, the robot appears unable to do what human workers can, such as make sensible decisions about how to stack physical objects on a pallet. That creates even more work for employees. “The program is telling us to put medium-weight things on light things; it doesn’t work. So we have to take it all back off and repack it”, Craig explained.

Another striker who has worked here for more than a decade said the pressure to meet 100 percent every day adds a new layer of fear, stress and anger that’s affecting home and family life. “You don’t want to take work home with you; everyone will agree with you on that”, Ajay* said. “[But] when you go home to your families, you’re thinking about how you gotta do that again tomorrow.”

100 percent is not a fixed amount of work—it’s an efficiency aspiration. Management can continuously adjust it and reset working conditions to ensure that more profits are squeezed from the workforce. People are stressed about falling behind the target and losing their job. A few minutes lost here or there, and workers can be called in to meetings.

“I’ve seen people hauled into the office for going 20 seconds, 30 seconds over their lunch break”, Jamie said.

“A lot of the guys have gone in there for a meeting and they haven’t come back out, you just see them getting walked off site”, Tee said.

That was all before the framework, which is giving managers even greater powers to bully and victimise. According to Jamie, management pushes workers harder if it wants them gone. “We’ve got ladies who’ve been with the company for 25 years, yet on a daily basis, they have to pick a lot more than others. It’s almost as if the company is trying to force them out, getting them to crumble and give up and walk out of their own accord.”

The union is also fighting for a proper wage rise to combat inflation. Woolworths says its pay offer is above the current inflation figure of 2.8 percent. But UWU members say this ignores the financial pain felt after years of rising grocery prices and housing costs, which are still worsening.

“Sydney is one of the most expensive cities in the world”, Tee said. Like most workers here, he is renting and has only just now been able to move out and find a place for his growing family. “It’s $600 a week, so I asked the real estate agent, does it have two swimming pools and a Ferrari out the front?”, he joked.

Those workers with mortgages are suffering from thirteen consecutive interest rate hikes. For each of the past two years, average wage increases have fallen behind average mortgage increases by around $1,000, according to Guardian economics editor Greg Jericho. Meanwhile, the big banks (as with their mates at Coles and Woolworths) are celebrating superprofit bonanzas. Little wonder that Reserve Bank governor Michelle Bullock came in for colourful rebuke around the picket line.

The pay claim is also about fairness. Across the country, wages differ from one Woolworths warehouse to the next. Erskine Park is praised by management as the most efficient distribution centre in Australia. Yet its hourly rate is much lower than at Minchinbury DC, just fifteen minutes’ drive away. “Align us with the other sheds”, one delegate demanded, echoing the union’s green placards cable-tied to the warehouse gates: “Every site, same rights at Woolworths!”

The first few days have seen a rock-solid shutdown, but it’s just the beginning. Workers at Erskine Park are assembling for an all-members’ meeting on Monday to discuss the next steps.

Whatever comes next, Woolworths warehouse workers are prepared for a long, hot summer strike against one of Australia’s most hated companies. The rest of us workers should be offering moral and material support—and learning a thing or two.

* Names have been changed at the interviewees’ request.

If you live in Sydney, show solidarity with strikers at their round-the-clock picket of Woolworths Distribution Centre, Sarah Andrews Close, Erskine Park.