Warehouse staff in Southland face uncertain times

Monday, 20 July 2020

The Warehouse stores in Southland will remain open in a planned restructure by the retail giant, but some staff will lose their jobs and others will have their hours cut, a union organiser says.

Staff at The Warehouse stores across the country went into meetings on Monday morning as the company finalised a restructuring process.

It is understood that, across the board, staff hours would be reduced and the company planned to eliminate 782 roles, plus 137 through store closures, There would also be job cuts at head office.

It is understood the Whangaparaoa store will close in January, the Johnsonville store at the end of August, the Warehouse Stationery in Te Awamutu will close in mid-October and the Dunedin The Warehouse store will close to the public in August but remain as an online centre.

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Otago-Southland First Union organiser Ken Young, who represents union members working at the Invercargill, Queenstown, Gore and Balclutha Warehouse stores, said all four would stay open under the restruture.

However, there would be job losses for some workers in the stores, and reduced hours for others, though no decisions had yet been made, he said.

Young did not believe the redundancies were necessary.

‘’Natural attrition could have achieved what they want without all this angst for staff, but in reality it’s about their bottom line [based on profit].’’

Neither the staff nor the customers would benefit from the restructure, he believed.

‘’There will be less staff on the floor and some staff will not have the same income after this process has finished … their hours will be cut.’’

Staff were subdued at the Invercargill meeting on Monday and were unsure what their futures held, he said.

The company was expected to make its final decisions in September.

Young said a positive was that The Warehouse had agreed to consider voluntary redundancies as opposed to forced redundancies.

He was unsure how it would affect those people being made redundant.

‘’Obviously there’s not many jobs out there at the moment and when the wage subsidy comes off [in September] that’s going to be exacerbated even more.’’

The Warehouse has not responded to questions on Monday.