The Warehouse confirms restructure, job cuts at 62 stores
Friday, 18 September 2020
The Warehouse has confirmed its plans to reshuffle roles at 62 stores as part of its ongoing restructure plans.
Staff were asked to reapply for roles and consider voluntary redundancy at the stores on Thursday, First Union retail and finance secretary Tali Williams said.
'Despite widespread and consistent feedback that hours reductions and job losses are the last things workers and communities need at such a precarious point in history, The Warehouse are ploughing ahead with their corporate restructure regardless,” Williams said.
The Warehouse announced in July that up to 1080 jobs could go as part of a major restructure across the group.
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The number of working hours would be reduced across the board and workers would no longer specialise in categories in the store.
Earlier this month The Warehouse Group chief operating officer Pejman Okhovat said staff at another 30 stores reached an agreement with the company in August on new rosters to be implemented in October.
Williams said the Covid-19 pandemic should not be “used as a backdrop for this restructure”.
“Good employers are keeping their staff on, paying people more, up-skilling and hiring new people, and they will be the ones who benefit in the longer-term recovery from the pandemic, as will the communities they are part of,” she said.
A The Warehouse spokeswoman said the changes were due to increasing customer demand for online and click-and-collect shopping because of Covid-19, as well as more customers preferring to shop at night and on weekends.
“The process, which began in June, has been to work with First Union and our store team representatives to understand their rostered hours availability at each store, discuss how customer shopping habits are changing and how we might need to adapt our rostered hours for each individual store.
“Based on feedback from team members during this process to date, we have also made changes to the proposed rosters,” she said.
The Warehouse Group, which includes The Warehouse, Warehouse Stationery, Noel Leeming, TheMarket and Torpedo7, reported 20 per cent drop in profit to $29.2 million for the half year to January 26.
But group sales were up 2.6 per cent to $1.68 billion.
The Warehouse also received $51.9m from the Government Covid-19 wage subsidy.