Warehouse workers have vowed to fight, following an announcement that retail giant Woolworths plans to vacate its Broadmeadows facility by 2018.
The workers, members of the National Union of Workers, supply more than 200 supermarkets across suburban Melbourne and regional Victoria.
Through relentless struggle, the Hume Distribution Centre workers have become the highest paid store people across Woolworth’s national distribution network of 20 facilities. They have won some of the best conditions in the logistics industry.
The workers at the Hume DC, located in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, were summoned by management to a meeting on 9 June, where the announcement was made. They were told that Woolworths would shift its major Victorian distribution centre to Melbourne’s south-east and that the new warehouse would be automated, leaving 700 people out of employment. The exact location of the new distribution centre has not been revealed.
The workers are preparing to wage a campaign to save their jobs and prevent the Broadmeadows shed from closing. Many have been employed at the centre since it opened in 1999.
Woolworths announced a record profit of $2.45 billion in 2014, up from $2.3 billion in 2013. Given the volume that is distributed out of the Hume DC, the Broadmeadows workers have played a crucial role in producing the company’s profits.
The announcement of the planned closure means Woolworths turning its back on the northern suburbs of Melbourne, from where it has operated warehouses for 50 years. The state member of parliament for Broadmeadows, Frank McGuire, has been contacted, but has not yet responded.
News of Woolworths’ relocation plan is 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 and leaving a further 600 people in the area out of work.
In the same week as the Woolworths announcement, management of Austube Mills, in the neighbouring suburb of Somerton, announced that 86 steel manufacturing workers would be retrenched by the end of August, with the company leaving Victoria in November.
With job losses in the region stacking up and a casualisation crisis gripping the country, workers understand the importance of the fight to save the Hume Distribution Centre.

NUW member

Warehouse workers to fight Woolworths closure

“You get close to doing some silly things when you’ve been off for six or seven months”, says Tim (not his real name), a Linfox worker, who has been stood down without pay. “The worst part is to see your partner come under pressure to pick up the slack. You feel useless, you feel worthless.”
It’s five o’clock in the morning, cloudy and cold. The sun won’t rise over us for a couple of hours. We’re talking to Tim out the front of the Coles Linfox distribution centre in Truganina, a suburb in Melbourne’s west. The National Union of Workers (NUW) has organised a candle-light vigil to commemorate Workers’ Memorial Day, a global day of mourning for dead and injured workers.
Around 20 or so NUW members and some officials mill around talking shop and trading war stories. The mood is sombre and conversation inevitably turns to health and safety. 
Tim tells us that he injured his arm doing the repetitive heavy lifting that is the lot of warehouse workers. In the six months he’s been off he’s used up his sick pay and annual leave to get by. Linfox is forcing injured workers out of the workplace, he says.
“We can’t even get any help from the government because they [Linfox] won’t give us a separation certificate. I went and saw Centrelink and they said they would give me $7.58 per fortnight!”
 “I can’t take the washing out, I can’t move, I can’t do anything”, he says. 
Linfox has become notorious in recent months for meting out this kind of treatment to its workers. In April the Age reported the story of John Russell, 65, who injured his shoulder at work and was stood down without pay. He had worked for Linfox for 37 years. Everyone here knows about John, but he is one of many.
According to an NUW official, the company has raised its pick rate (the number of cartons to be picked per hour) by 50 percent in the last year. This sharp increase led to a spike in workplace injuries, necessitating a merciless approach to the continued employment of older or injured workers, people deemed “liabilities”.
Many claim that Linfox intentionally forces older permanent workers into the most gruelling jobs in order to break them, so they can be replaced by younger casuals.
According to Tim, there can be other reasons too. “The real agenda can be against union delegates and health and safety reps, because they stand up for workers”, he says. “Or it could be against anyone who stands up to management, people that have been in the industry for longer and that know their rights.”
Linfox has made a particularly morbid name for itself in one of the most dangerous industries in Australia, but the other main Coles distribution centres are no better.
The NUW recently conducted a survey across the three largest Coles warehouses in Victoria, run by Linfox, Toll and Polar Fresh. Of the workers surveyed, 90 percent said they experience pressure to achieve pick rates; 75 percent say they are forced to work unsafely; nearly half said that they hadn’t reported an injury because of fear about job security and 86 percent believe that Coles is responsible for conditions in the distribution centres. 
“We know that Coles is pushing pressure down the supply chain”, Susie Allison, assistant secretary of the Victorian branch of the NUW, told the vigil. “That is what is injuring our workers and Coles must be held accountable”, she said. 
As the speeches wind down a middle-aged man cautiously speaks up from the edge of the crowd. “Excuse me ... can I say something?” Everyone turns toward the voice as Brad (not his real name) gathers himself to speak.
“I’d just like to say that we should remember my sister too. She passed away on the operating table after suffering a work-related injury.”
Afterwards we wander over to find out more about his story. Brad tells us that a year ago Linfox pushed the pick rates up to levels that aren’t achievable.
“If you can’t reach the pick rates you won’t get overtime. They keep pushing you and bullying you every time your pick rate is low. I’d try to get them off my shoulders and push myself to achieve the target. That’s how I hurt my back.”
Brad was injured in May last year. He didn’t realise it was three slipped disks until he had scans done months later. Like all the others, he’s been stood down without pay. He’s used up his sick pay, rostered days off and annual leave to survive, but it’s been a month without work and he’s running out of money.
 “I’ve got ten kids and a mortgage”, he says. “I’m struggling to put food on the table. I might lose my house.”
His voice begins to crack and he takes a second to collect himself. In the silence we can hear the distant roar of semi-trucks that are navigating the dark, deserted streets of this city’s vast industrial west.
“Management tried to claim that I injured myself outside of work in order to avoid paying any compensation. And if you speak up, they will send you to sections with a lot of heavy lifting, like dog food, for punishment. Even though they knew I was injured, they sent me to pick dog food for over two weeks as punishment for speaking up.”
“I’m not a bludger,” he insists, as though he’s faced that accusation before, “I want to work. But when you get hurt you become replaceable to them.”
We ask him about his sister. She was injured at another warehouse, he says. The step-ladder she was standing on broke and she fell backward, hurting her back. Eventually she needed surgery to fix it but didn’t survive the operation.
“Now, I’ve hurt my back, but I’m terrified of having an operation”, he says. “I know that I will carry this injury with me for the rest of my life.”

Brian Lewis

‘When you get hurt you become replaceable’

Workers at a warehouse in Melbourne’s north-east have ended a drawn-out enterprise agreement fight, accepting a deal that they say is a win. The Reject Shop workers, members of the National Union of Workers, have secured an agreement that retains all of their existing conditions despite the boss’s concerted attempt to gut these.
Their dispute dates back to the expiry of their last agreement in July, when management went on the warpath, attacking redundancy and long service leave entitlements. The company also wanted to increase the number of casual workers and proposed the introduction of CCTV cameras to monitor staff in the warehouse.
It offered an annual pay rise of 2.7 percent if the workers gave away a raft of conditions. But for more than seven months, the workers stood strong. “They had 48 claims”, said union delegate Dave Sharpe, speaking to Red Flag, “and we didn’t budge on any of them. We saved all our conditions.”
Indicating the ferocity of management’s approach, Dave was sacked in the heat of battle last year and reinstated only after a union campaign.
The new enterprise agreement provides an annual pay rise of 1.5 percent, with back pay. Though this means that the Reject Shop workers’ wage rises will not match inflation, Dave said that they consider the agreement, as a whole, to be good, given the scale of management’s attack. 
“It has been a long struggle”, said Dave, “but the majority of people are rapt that we managed to stick it out. The point is, you don’t sell conditions.”

Ryan Stanton

Dispute over at the Reject Shop

Workers at The Reject Shop warehouse in Melbourne’s north-west have faced down a serious attack by management during enterprise agreement bargaining. NUW (National Union of Workers) delegate Dave Sharpe – who was stood down for more than two weeks – spoke to Red Flag about what they’re fighting for.
Bargaining for a new agreement started in April. Management stonewalled workers on their pay claim, battering their initial demand for 7 percent per year down to 4 percent and then to 3.2 percent. Until recently, the company was offering only a 2.7 percent per year pay rise if the workers traded-off a raft of conditions, including half of their long service and redundancy entitlements. “They want to make savings through our conditions”, Dave says.
Casual work is also at the forefront of The Reject Shop workers’ campaign. Management wants to increase the proportion of casual workers from between 25 to 40 percent of the site (based on seasonal variations) to 50 percent. “As soon as you mention casualisation people say ‘yeah, that’s affected me or my family’”, Dave says. “Agencies have control of the casuals put into the workforce, they don’t actually give a shit about them.”
“An English man even signed one of our petitions at a Reject Shop store because he was made casual back home. This is obviously a global issue. We need ratios to push [the company] to hire permanents, or else they will just fill the workforce with casuals.”
The Reject Shop warehouse workers have so far fought the company’s plans. They’ve visited company shops to talk to customers about the way they’ve been treated and gate-crashed the retail chain’s recent annual general meeting. Importantly, they struck for 24 hours on 15 October.
It was after this that Dave was stood down. “The company thinks that with me out of the way they will benefit”, Dave told Red Flag at the time. “I think they’ve made the wrong decision”, he said. “It’s just made everyone more angry. People read the company’s claims themselves, and they’re not idiots. They know what’s going on, they don’t need a delegate to tell them.”
Dave was spot on. Recently, the company heard “rumours” that the workers were going to vote down its latest proposal and vote up further industrial action. Dave was reinstated after being home for more than two weeks. The Reject Shop has also put a new offer to the workers which concedes many of their demands.
But management haven’t backed down on everything; they are still refusing to drop their plan to increase the number of casuals to half the workforce. The company also further reduced its pay offer to an annual average of less than 2.2 percent over the length of the agreement, well below inflation.
According to NUW industrial officer Dario Mujkic, “Dave had the full support of his workmates and we are happy to have him back. The company has backed down on most claims, but it’s not over yet.”
Dave says he is relieved to be reinstated. “I really appreciate the support from everyone at the warehouse, and the trade union movement in general really got behind me. They can see we’ve got a battle on our hands.”
“They [The Reject Shop] are worth millions, but they are still determined to take from us. The members have stayed strong and they are continuing the campaign.”

Warehouse workers to fight Woolworths closure

‘When you get hurt you become replaceable’

Dispute over at the Reject Shop

Not quite right at The Reject Shop

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