Union tents have stood outside Coles’ Smeaton Grange distribution centre in Sydney’s south-west since last November, when the retail giant locked out its workforce rather than negotiate fairer redundancy conditions as the facility approaches closure in 2023. Now, the red marquees have been disassembled after workers agreed to an offer from the company last weekend. 
It was the latest in a series of non-union agreements from Coles that offered no real improvements to redundancies but included meagre concessions such as one-off bonuses to get employees to vote them up. Half a dozen such contracts have been rejected by these essential workers, who have remained defiant even after the initial three-month lockout was extended indefinitely.
When the pandemic hit last March, the centre’s workers pulled fourteen- and sixteen-hour days to restock the supermarkets after panic-buying. On the back of their labour, Coles declared that it had banked a record $951 million in quarterly profits: enough to cover the cost of its new mechanised distribution facilities that will put everyone in the existing network out of work by 2024. 
The company was determined to force its terms on the workers at Smeaton, who proudly describe themselves as the most militant shed in the network. When their enterprise agreement came up for negotiation in October, Coles made one offer: four weeks’ redundancy per year of service, capped at 80 weeks, available only to those employees still on the books when the facility shut its doors. They refused to negotiate further.
The workers rejected the offer and voted for strike action. After the vote, the United Workers Union waited more than two weeks for a one-day strike approved by the Fair Work Commission. Coles used the advance notice to hunker down for a long fight, sending the centre’s stock and equipment to other parts of the network, and setting up two “pop-up” distribution centres at Smithfield and Prospect. 
Some unionists, including Lee*, a veteran of more than 25 years, argued for a change in tactics. “I told them, cancel the strike. Then the company will have to bring everything back. Then after that you walk out!” But by the morning of the planned action, the closest thing to perishables left in the Smeaton Grange distribution centre was long life milk. At that point, Coles declared a three-month lockout.
Despite the running start for the company, morale was high in December. Many unionists expected that Coles wouldn’t be able to operate through the holiday rush without the Smeaton centre. On Facebook, they shared pictures of empty shelves in stores and pallets collapsing and tearing their shrink-wrap, poorly stacked by casuals at the pop-up distribution centres. 
It was a long overdue opportunity to fight back. Many stories from the centre sound like those you hear from Amazon warehouses: getting disciplined for returning from lunch 30 seconds late, staff having panic attacks in their cars and turning home rather than clock on one minute after the start of shift, and managers outright refusing toilet breaks. One worker with a chronic gastric condition was asked to turn over their medical records to justify their time in the bathroom. 
Once the lockdown began, workers lambasted Coles’ chief operating officer, Matt Swindell. Swindell embraced the role of villain, posting intimidating video messages to unionists. A supporter of the workers remixed one such video to the sound of a badly-played recorder, intercutting Swindell’s bravado with images of collapsing goods and stock shortages. 
Coles’ distribution network did not collapse over the holiday period. Over the New Year, the company put out its first non-union offer, which contained a now-infamous “clause nine” that would have allowed it to persecute unionists for activity during the lockout. Shockingly, union leaders declared a “neutral” position on the deal, leaving rank-and-file members and supporters to campaign against it. The offer was voted down: then a follow-up non-union offer was rejected by a mere four votes.
Morale floundered, but Coles’ offers continued to be rejected, often by small margins. In one non-binding union poll, members voted to accept a deal, only to reject the deal when put to a vote by Coles days later. Workers weren’t just stubbornly refusing to lose: many knew that they needed to take the fight to the company. They discussed the prospect of solidarity action from other distribution centres. They pushed for more strike relief payments from the UWU, adorning their cars with signs saying “Strike Fund Now!” at one meeting. Some wanted pickets at the other distribution centres. 
John* had taken part in a rain-soaked blockade at Coles’ massive cold-storage facility in Eastern Creek in late December, which had backed up a dozen trucks outside an entrance before dispersing at police request. “We were on the right track with that”, he said later. “I don’t know why we meet up every morning [at the Smeaton Grange centre]. We should be meeting every morning at Eastern Creek and shutting them down over there ... Then we could come back at night!” Workers had the ideas and the energy necessary to win, but no leadership existed that could bring the no-voters together to act decisively, and the impetus would not come from the union officials, who often scolded them for divisiveness when they argued with yes-voters at meetings.
Unwilling to take a step backward yet hamstrung from taking a step forward, the resolve of these workers was finally spent last week. Their new agreement is barely different to Coles’ original offer, but this struggle has welded together a core of determined no-voters. It’s taught them that to win they need active strikes, and they need to be ready to go beyond the union officials. These are not empty lessons: Coles will try and do what it has done at Smeaton at its other distribution centres, and the rest of the warehose distribution industry is following suit. The experience at Smeaton Grange was not a victory, but it has shown that workers have what it takes to beat giants like Coles if they can put these lessons into practice.
* Names have been changed.

Daniel Kenny

Lockout at Coles distribution centre ends with bosses’ deal

Just down the road from Woolworths’ Wyong Regional Distribution Centre (RDC) in New South Wales is one of the biggest truck stops on the Pacific Motorway. Stopping there, you’d never realise that you’ve just passed a linchpin in the supermarket giant’s logistics network. In the last two weeks, this inconspicuous regional workplace shot into the news as the site of a defiant struggle by workers. On 13 August, their strike ended in a deal that quadrupled Woolworths’ initial pay increase offer and secured rights for casuals. Their achievement comes at a time when many are arguing that unions should collaborate with bosses and offer concessions to get through tough times. But the strike at the RDC has shown what can be won when workers fight instead.
“We needed to prove a point. We haven’t been on strike in fifteen years”, John, a forklift driver and United Workers Union delegate, says. “We finally stood together and, honestly, some of the days up here in the pissing down rain last week? Knee deep in mud and puddles and whatnot? We stood here shoulder to shoulder and at three o’clock in the morning I seen ’em dancing on the fucking road there mate—because they were united. And they’re still united now.”
By the end of the two weeks, the grass around the entrance to the industrial park had been carved into a deep brown trench, drying slowly in the sun. “We all made new friends on that picket line. I can’t even count how many I’ve made”, Mia (not her real name) says. “They were dancing out there in the rain and wind having the time of their lives.” John puts it a little differently: “We’re family now. We weren’t before”.
It had been a gruelling year prior to the win. Jeff Kirkman, the head delegate, says that workers didn’t stop even when the sheds filled with smoke from the “mega blaze” bushfires in December. When coronavirus panic buying emptied supermarkets of toilet paper and non-perishable foods, they worked overtime to restock them. “It was the volume equivalent of three Christmases, one after the other”, he says. 
Management already make work in the RDC as hard as possible—in particular by enforcing unrealistic pick rates. Casual workers who don’t make the rate won’t get a shift the following day. For full-timers, it’s not much better. “They will check your record for the last six months and your pick rate has to be between 95 and 100 percent”, John says. “After six months of picking fuckin’ boxes and we’re talking 16 kilo boxes of drinks and bulk flour and all that kind of shit, your body just can’t keep up with it, mate. We’re breaking people left, right and centre.”
Pulling NSW out of a crisis caused by the just-in-time supply chains and being labelled essential workers might have left people at the RDC with the impression they deserved better than this. There’d been a lot of talk in the shed about the successes of a strike last year at Woolworths’ Minchinbury warehouse in Sydney. John says workers even felt competitive about it: “Minchinbury got 16 percent and they were already 8, 10 percent in front of us. So we needed to go out and try and play catch up”.
But instead of the 18 percent pay rise workers needed to bring them in line with their Sydney counterparts, Woolworths offered just 3 percent. When they walked out, the bosses responded with two weeks of lockouts, and undermined the strike by setting up a “pop-up transfer station” up the road at Berkeley Vale.
The strikers fought back. “We caused some chaos to the poor transport guys down at Berkeley Vale”, Mia says. A worker who was involved explains that the strikebreakers made the mistake of parking on a public road: “As soon as they disconnected that truck, we parked in front of it ... even when we blocked them in at Berkeley Vale, they went to the twin Caltexes here and started running out of there. So we sent a crew of boys over there—park ’em in. It’s a public street, you can park anywhere you want!” Woolies tried to move the work to Minchinbury, but workers there refused to scab on the strike, rejecting overtime work. Then a crew drove down from Wyong and parked-in the trucks for good measure. 
Even when the only people out front of the RDC are union volunteers cleaning up on the last day of the strike, just about every passing car is honking in support. Cars have pulled up with pizzas, blankets, cupcakes, even firewood. John says that just about everyone in the area knows someone who’s worked in the RDC. So when workers won a new rule in their contract forcing Woolworths to offer permanent employment to casuals in order of seniority rather than pick rate, it was a win for the whole community. “When our children, when our cousins, when our brothers, when our husbands and wives come into this warehouse, they’re not gonna be going out in an ambulance with a fucked back, or a fucked neck or a fucked shoulder.”
By 6 August, management were offering 12 percent, but many workers wanted to keep fighting, including John. “We deserve the 18 percent ... ‘same job, same pay’ was the motto of the strike.” The decision went to a vote, but with a twist. Of 500 members, 300 were at the picket that morning, and the union organisers decided that the absentees would weigh the ballot towards accepting the deal. They needed 75 percent to stay out on strike: they got 60 percent. “A lot of disappointment came out of it”, Mia says.
For John, what matters is the bond of solidarity forged between workers. “Even though we’ve gone back in and it was a very close vote on both sides—I don’t think that’s changed that.” They’ll return to the RDC with memories of supporters turning up with hot pasties in the rain and of the strikebreakers’ vehicles parked-in at the iconic truck stop nearby. For Mia, the highlight was Hank, the dog John was fostering, the unofficial mascot and “dog delegate” of the picket, who was adopted for good by a union organiser before the end. But this strike isn’t just a historic win at a regional warehouse—it’s proof that the way forward for workers in this crisis is to fight and to win.

Lockout at Coles distribution centre ends with bosses’ deal

The strike in Wyong

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