Chapter 5The experiences of supermarket employees
5.1There are more than 230 000 people employed across the country by the supermarket branches of Coles and Woolworths. Supermarket employees play a vital role in supporting Australians who shop at supermarkets every day—and yet, evidence to the committee suggests that some employees can barely afford to eat the food they are selling in store, in sharp contrast to the huge profits generated by Coles and Woolworths.
5.2This brief chapter considers the evidence received about the impacts of supermarket pricing and market power on supermarket workers, and their pay, health and safety.
Low hourly rates for workers
5.3Woolworths is Australia's largest private sector employer, employing around 176 000 workers, with an estimated 128 000 working in its supermarkets, including in regional areas. In 2021 the group's wage bill was around $8 billion.
5.4MrBrad Banducci, CEO of Woolworths, advised the committee that on average its adult team members earn $29 per hour—above minimum award rates—with actual take home pay dependent on the shifts employees work and whether they work full time or not. Woolworths estimated around 40 per cent of its workers earn less than $500 per week.
5.5Mr Banducci estimated that around 75 per cent of its workers shop at Woolworths weekly, with workers receiving a five per cent team discount.
5.6Coles employees approximately 120 000 workers, of which around 103 000 work in its supermarkets business. It noted that its wages and salaries spending is around $5 billion per annum, growing around $600 million over the last fouryears, driven by increases to the minimum wage and superannuation guarantee.
5.7Ms Leah Weckert, CEO of Coles, advised its adult shopfloor workers are paid around $25 per hour. Based on 2024 figures, Coles explained that around 40percent of its workers earnt less than $500 per week, with a range of factors influencing take home pay, 'including team members who seek part time and casual employment with Coles'.
5.8Ms Weckert advised that a proportion of its team members shop with Coles, with around 500000 team member transactions occurring weekly.
5.9The Retail and Fast Food Workers Union (RAFFWU) clarified that enterprise bargaining agreements for Coles and Woolworths workers pay higher than the minimum wage, but only by a 'matter of cents'.
5.10The committee heard that supermarket workers are 'among the lowest paid workers in Australia', with rates of pay just above award rates, and lower for younger workers. In addition to low pay rates, there is clear evidence, prosecuted through the courts and similar forums, of repeated underpayment and exploitation of tens of thousands of workers by the big supermarket chains.
5.11Supermarket workers are also consumers, and they advised the committee in some cases they could not afford the groceries being sold in the supermarkets in which they worked, and other cost of living challenges posed by low pay. MrReinecker from the RAFFWU said:
We have to buy the groceries on the shelf, and the prices are going up to the point that we can't afford it—to the point that even our staff discount isn't enough to enable us to buy the stuff that we sell, and we have gone to Aldi because there are more bargains there.
5.12The Australia Institute suggested that 'the economic power wielded by these twin large employers [Coles and Woolworths] helps to suppress wages and working conditions, since they do not compete with others for scarce labour'.
5.13The payment rates for shop floor workers for both Woolworths and Coles are contrasted dramatically by the earnings of their chief executive officers, with MrBanducci paid $8.65 million in 2023 (including fixed remuneration, bonuses and other compensation), with MsWeckert paid $3.3 million in 2023 (for two months as CEO and 10 months in a previous role at Coles).
The need to increase wages
5.14Along with other submitters and witnesses, the Australia Institute advocated for 'higher wages, more stable jobs, and adequate rosters for supermarket workers—and this will require countervailing pressure to be applied against the concentrated monopsony power of the supermarket duopoly'. It also supported strengthened powers for labour regulators, including the Fair Work Ombudsman, to address wage theft and other exploitative practices.
5.15The Combined Pensioners and Superannuants Association of NSW argued for increases to wages, submitting that 'in the face of such market power and profiteering from Coles and Woolworths, Government must intervene to regulate price increases and support consumers through wage and welfare payment increases'.
Unsafe working environments
5.16In addition to inadequate wages, the committee received advice that large supermarket employers were delivering poor outcomes to their workers, through unsafe work environments and practices.
5.17For example, the RAFFWU submitted that Coles and Woolworths workers:
… feel the effect of price gouging every day in two critical ways. Firstly, they simply cannot afford the food and groceries they sell in their workplaces. Secondly, they are the public face to irate consumers who exact their disquiet onto workers. When an aggrieved consumer decides to give a spray to Coles or Woolworths for gouging them at the checkout, it is not the CEO, CFO [Chief Financial Officer], hardened executive or managing director who is being abused.
It is a mum, dad, child, sibling, young worker, older worker, poverty wage worker, insecure worker who is facing the brunt of the abuse. A worker who is in the same financial position as the aggrieved consumer – or often far worse.
5.18The committee heard Coles received around 8000 reports of worker abuse between June2013 and March 2024, with around 7000 events recorded for Woolworths from March2014 to March 2024. Woolworths advised that a Point of Sale Verbal Abuse Tool launched in February 2024 showed an average of nearly 700verbal abuse incidents impacting 430 staff weekly. However, MrJoshCullinan from the RAFFWU told the committee that abuse incidents were likely underreported.
5.19The Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA) also highlighted abuse and violence by customers, advising 87 per cent of their members worker for a supermarket retailer experienced abuse—76 per cent of them on a regular basis.
5.20Mr Reinecker of RAFFWU went into further detail on the incidents that are occurring in our supermarkets:
The acts of violence that I've witnessed at my store in the past 12 months have been quite disturbing, and it has escalated. We've had shopfront windows smashed, with glass landing near children in prams. We had the same alleged perpetrator come into the store two days later and actually punch a staff member. We had an incident where a man wasn't happy at the checkout and spat on a co-worker. There was an altercation between two customers. It is increasing and it's putting a lot of stress on people, in that when they engage with customers they don't know what the end of that engagement is going to be—whether it's going to be violent, whether it's going to be abusive or whether it's going to be pleasant.
5.21Mr Cullinan argued that the high rates of threats and abuse towards supermarket staff was unacceptable:
That it is allowed to occur and continues to occur to some of our youngest and most vulnerable workers, who are paid poverty wages, says a lot about the power-mongering and power of this duopoly. It would not be acceptable in any other workplace.
5.22In addition to unsafe work environments, the SDA drew attention to the 'use of technology and automation to extract cost savings from consumers and employees'. It discussed with the committee the use of technology and automation on shop floors and warehouses to allocate work, monitor, train and communicate with workers, and determine how and when work is completed. The SDA advised that nevertheless, work should be 'secure and safe', workers should be skilled up in the use of technology, and they should ' receive a fair share of productivity gains' and improved profits.
5.23Supermarket workers also highlighted safety issues faced by supermarket workers because of asset stockpiling and food waste and disposal practices.
5.24The supermarkets responded and told the committee that they have 'a range of measures and interventions in place to support and protect team members'.