LABOUR PAINS

More than 250,000 low-paid workers are the focus of the most far-reaching workplace reform in 30 years. The business sector has vowed to fight it.

- REBECCA MACFIE

Victoria (not her real name) has been filling the shelves at Countdown for five years. She's a permanent staffer and works steady hours: she starts at 8.30pm and finishes at 6am, except for Sundays when it's 6pm until 3.30am.

It's heavy work, lifting boxes of cheese, flour, pet food, Coke and countless other grocery items from pallets on to display shelves. Apart from two 30-minute breaks, she's on her feet all night, putting her back and legs, arms and shoulders into the service of the $22 billion grocery trade.

She has a forklift licence, is trained in health and safety and has a first-aid ticket. She has experience as a supervisor and, as a delegate with First Union, she supports other workers, including those facing a rising tide of aggression from customers, and new hires who don't know their entitlements.

She's paid $22.22 an hour for labouring through the nights. There's nothing extra for weekend work. Through the first Level 4 lock-down in 2020, Countdown and Foodstuffs topped up supermarket wages by 10%, but that was stopped as soon as restrictions eased. Since then, being an "essential worker" hasn't come with any compensation for working through the pandemic, coping with surges of panic buying, and battling through Omicron-induced staff shortages.

She lives in a regional town and has grownup children. She gets by, “but it's hard. I struggle to buy food. But I am really grateful I've got a job,” she says.

Her employer, meanwhile, does not seem to be struggling. According to the Commerce Commission's study of the supermarket sector, between 2015 and 2019, Woolworths (the owner of Countdown) and Foodstuffs (New World, Pak’nSave, Four Square) raked in $430 million in “excess profits" every year.