Thursday, 12 September 2024

Supermarket workforce

Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (10:02): I am not usually one to dwell on the good old days, but remember when we could go to the supermarket and buy our groceries from a real person at a check-out? Remember that? Well, it feels like those days are somewhat long gone. The supermarket giants Coles and Woolies are always looking to increase their mega profits, and one way they can do this is through dark stores, which are as ominous as they sound. They look like real supermarkets and some of them used to be real supermarkets, but now they are closed to the public and they are run like Amazon-style warehouses where staff are put under huge pressure and timed to pick and pack online orders, sometimes expected to pack over 200 items per hour. We have even heard that in one of these stores the names of the workers who fell behind were displayed on a board in red for all to see. We have heard of workers pouring sweat while trying to keep up, with only a brief break on their shift. All of this sounds like a terrifying real-life episode of Squid Game, frankly. And I have not even mentioned the robots – the dishwasher-sized things going around picking out the produce. Look, they are quicker and they complain less than a human, I suppose. It is certainly working for these supermarkets too, given Coles has just reported a 30 per cent growth in grocery ecommerce sales and $1.1 billion in profit – but at what cost? Bring back the people, ditch the robots.