Opinion: Supermarkets may regret their penny-pinching

Friday, 1 May 2020

After giving waged supermarket staff a 10 per cent pay bonus at the end of March, Australian-owned Countdown and locally owned Foodstuffs (Pak 'n Save and New World) decided to roll that back.

OPINION: It sounds an unlikely pairing. A social democrat who used to work in a fish and chip shop, and a career public health official who spent a couple of years moonlighting for the World Health Organisation.

But sometimes the most unlikely things can become the most unmissable and for the last five weeks the Jacinda Ardern/Ashley Bloomfield 1pm coronavirus update double-act has become the pivotal media event in the nation.

Slate magazine described Bloomfield as 'a mild-mannered health care hero', but we couldn’t get enough of him. And while surface relationship with the prime minister is very arms length and role delineated, the trust between then is palpable.

Mike O’Donnell: It's remarkable multi-billion-dollar supermarket companies would try to nickel and dime the workers at the coalface.

* Spot the difference between the walkers and the workers

* Lockdown bonus removed for supermarket workers

'If my experience is anything to go by, there wasn’t a lot of deep discounting going on to drag down margins.'

As well as the operational update, the event has also given the prime minister opportunities to go off the reservation on matters of context and behaviour, good and bad.

This has included giving recognition to the folks doing the hard yards, like cleaners and truck drivers, as well as putting the spotlight on Covid-19 ninnies including one of her own cabinet ministers.

Though the event was set up as a public health formal notification during a national state of emergency, it’s became more than that. Its served as a bellwether as New Zealand entered a phase of nation building, or more specifically re-building as we prepare for life in a post Covid-19 world.

There’s no formal blueprint for that nation building but you can see parts of it exposed as we’ve hit the economic low water mark over the last month.

Seeing our physical isolation as a blessing rather than a curse. Having the private sector work with the public sector for public good. Connecting with our neighbours and local community. Rolling up our sleeves and getting on with it.

All these and more seem to be part of the brand architecture for the nation building that we’re in the early stages of.

During my South Canterbury lockdown I’ve seen it manifested across multiple data points.

Walking around the streets I’ve noticed neighbours putting up boxes of free fruit and veges outside their houses.

Standing in the dark at the front gate on Anzac Day, the notes of the last post floated along the misty streets of cellphone-lit faces.

Waiting for the postie each afternoon, I marvelled at her ability to inject humour during the slightly awkward act of handing out mail while respecting social distancing.

Daily pressers have given the prime minister opportunities to go off the reservation on matters of context and behaviour, good and bad.

I also came to really respect those blessed folks who have staffed the frontline at supermarkets over the last month.

Realistically it's these supermarkets staff who have been most at risk, as supermarkets became the common hub where all individual spokes of locked down households met.

But you could never tell the pressure they were under. In my experience here at the local Countdown in Timaru, they have been unwaveringly brave, gracious and positive.

It’s an extraordinary thing. Workers that appear barely out of school, morphing into the centre of your social circle as you hunker down and hope for the best.

Against this unlikely social landscape I was stunned to hear the news that after giving their waged supermarket staff a 10 per cent pay bonus at the end of March, Australian-owned Countdown and locally owned Foodstuffs (Pak 'n Save and New World) decided to roll that back when the country came out of lockdown last week.

So for a person who managed to pull in $20 an hour for the last month, suddenly they find themselves back at $18.20.

Given alert level 3 is basically just level 4 with takeaways, it seems remarkable that these two multi-billion-dollar companies would try to nickel and dime the workers at the coalface who are still among those most at risk.

According to local economists supermarket spending ramped up as much as 60 per cent last month.

Meanwhile, if my experience is anything to go by, there wasn’t a lot of deep discounting going on to drag down margins.

So it’s not as if the supermarket companies couldn’t afford to pay an extra 10 per cent to wage workers for the next couple of weeks until we get to relative normality of alert level 2.

Taking a look at the bigger picture, it just seems to run contrary to the nation building activities we’re seeing elsewhere and against the kindness credo that our leaders have pushing.

I can’t help but think if Ardern and Bloomfield ran the billion dollar empires of Countdown and Foodstuffs, they would have made a kinder call on this one.

I reckon the public are going to have a long memory of how corporates acted during the lockdown. And like Uber Eats refusing to give cafes a break on commission rates, the supermarket giants might live to regret their call on this one.

You don’t want to be remembered as mean in a time of nation building.

* Mike “MOD” O’Donnell is a professional director, writer and strategic advisor.