‘Orwellian’: Woolworths workers’ putting safety at risk under ‘punitive’ tracking system, union warns

Workers have blasted Woolworths for a “nefarious” workplace surveillance system that is putting employees’ health and safety at risk as they push themselves to the limit to meet increasingly “unrealistic” efficiency standards.

Warehouse workers at the grocery giant are tracked and rated to meet an efficiency rate out of 100 each shift. That rate is based on an algorithm that predicts how long it should take to do each task.

Under a new Coaching and Productivity Framework, failure to meet that standard (without good reason) or improve their stats could lead to disciplinary action or even loss of employment.

A spokesperson for Primary Connect, Woolworths’ supply chain arm, said the framework ensures a “fair approach” so that every team member can work to the “best of their ability”.

“As the country’s largest private sector employer, we are committed to ensuring that our workplaces are safe and productive for our teams and customers,” a spokesperson told The Nightly.

But unions and Woolies workers beg to differ.

Workers reported feeling constant, increasing pressure to fill orders within tighter timeframes, telling the United Workers Union (UWU) they had to “work unsafely” to meet the targets.

In a submission to the consumer watchdog, the UWU said members have been told that regardless of gap times — where there is a delay in retrieving a product for any number of reasons — “pick rates of less than 100 per cent could result in disciplinary action”.

“It’s all nefarious, and it’s been happening for a number of years,” the union’s national director for logistics Dario Mujkic said.

“Warehouse workers are already doing risky work lifting heavy or bulky items. Now you’re forcing workers to do that at a speed that may be beyond them, and they’re risking injuries to meet these targets.

“But it’s not just the pressure of the fear of injury, they’ve got the fear of losing their job if they don’t meet the standard.”

Primary Connect said its “engineered standards” have been developed to reflect how long it would take “a person with reasonable skill, applying reasonable effort, working at a safe and conscientious pace that can be maintained for the duration of a shift, should take to complete a task.”

Engineered standards apply across all Australian supermarket warehouses and were first introduced in the 1980s. They are meant to be reviewed every two years to reflect changes in the warehouses.

“Engineered standards provide us a baseline to coach team members who require support while ensuring we can manage the efficient movement of stock in and out of distribution centres,” Primary Connect said in a statement.

Mr Mujkic said the UWU’s issue with Woolworths’ new framework, however, was its “punitive” approach.

“All companies have engineered standards, but not all require workers to meet the standard but see it as a goal,” he added.

“The issue here is the punitive approach: we’ll investigate and may discipline you for missing the target.”

He said the UWU is in ongoing talks with Woolworths over the framework, which was paused after thousands of union members raised formal disputes when it was introduced.

“We can’t have a system in place where a standard is applied universally via threat of punishment,” Mr Mukjic said.

“We accept that people need to work to the best of their ability, and people generally do, but the company needs to work on a way to manage people’s work without applying unfair, Orwellian and, frankly, discriminatory system.”

Primary Connect said it would engage with distribution centres in “due course”.