Woolworths referred to Fair Work

The Australian Financial Review (AFR) has reported Woolworths has been referred to the Fair Work Commission over its recent changes to the supermarket.

Despite Woolworths reportedly claiming the changes were not aimed at cutting jobs, staff at more than 1000 of the company’s supermarkets have been told their roles will be made redundant and staff should reapply for new roles, seek redeployment elsewhere in the group or take redundancy the AFR reported.

As a result, The Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association (SDA) said it was taking Woolworths to the Fair Work Commission over the restructuring.

“The SDA has serious concerns that the company failed to properly consult workers and the union and that many of the planned redundancies are not genuine,” the SDA said.

“The proposed changes are in no way connected to the new Woolworths Agreement [a new enterprise agreement signed last year] and is not something the SDA had any input into,” it said.

A Woolworths spokesperson said: “Our immediate focus is identifying as many redeployment opportunities as possible for impacted team members across our business”.

“Under the new model, we’re creating more customer-facing leadership roles to help deliver better service to our customers and to meet their changing shopping needs,” the spokesperson said.

 

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