Workers First has announced that Woolworths has been looking to send around 130 New Zealanders’ jobs to Australia after announcing consultation on a plan to close its Customer Care Centre.
Over 130 workers who provide customer support to New Zealanders were called to a meeting and told consultation has begun on offshoring their jobs to Australia in a "cost-saving" proposal the company believes will net it an extra NZD 4.1 million by the 2029 financial year.
Consultation on the proposal has begun, with the deadline for feedback from affected workers on the 15th of September.
According to Rudd Hughes, Workers First Deputy Secretary, the proposal was another form of "corporate greed", and he called on New Zealanders to send their feedback to the company. He said this is yet another example of New Zealanders losing out to Australia because companies like Woolworths see them as expendable.
"They’re happy to earn big profits in our country and make Kiwis reliant on their supermarkets, but they are planning to throw away more than a hundred of our jobs to save a very small amount of money over the next three years,” said Hughes.
"There should be a reasonable expectation that a large company like Woolworths should reinvest into the society where its customer base is generating those profits - but Woolworths seem to care only about their bottom lines."
Hughes added that union organisers reported that at the 20-minute meeting, Woolworths representatives said that workers’ views are ‘very important’ but refused to answer questions and closed the meeting after reading from their script. Organisers said some staff returned to work afterwards in tears and wondered whether their feedback would be considered at all.
"These are the same workers who were locked out by Woolworths at Christmas because they wouldn’t accept worse terms and conditions, and this proposal is a further slap in the face," he said.
"Woolworths wasted over NZD 400 million to re-rebrand themselves and are now axing over a hundred New Zealand jobs just to claw back around one percent of that cost.”
Workers First has provided feedback on the proposal to the company and will continue to advocate for union members during the consultation period. He said New Zealanders should note that this could also mean worse service for Woolworths customers.
The proposed closure of the New Zealand Customer Care Centre followed Woolworths’ recent restructuring of South Island store butchers, which has resulted in around 40 jobs being lost.
