“A wage increase is critical”: the pressures facing Aussie retail workers

s and cutbacks. Experts are also predicting that Australia’s supermarket chains might be in for a “rough second half” due to higher-than-usual household and grocery expenses. With the gap between wages and inflation at its highest level since the ABS started compiling data for the wage-price index in 1998, retail staff are facing pressures at home, which are potentially compounded by insecure working conditions and job security.  This follows the stress placed on retail workers during the years affected by pandemic restriction. According to the University of Sydney’s Pandemic Pressures report, 56 per cent of respondents faced an increase in customer abuse, and just under half of retail workers saw a decrease in job security during this period. It also adds to existing economic pressures placed on retail workers in an industry that’s rife with allegations of wage theft, and with big brands allegedly instituting poor workplace conditions. PhD candidate for the University of Sydney and researcher for the Australian Education Research Organisation, Laura Good told Inside Retail that job security is a big issue in retail, with high rates of casual work making it difficult for retail workers to plan ahead. She said that women under the age of 30, in frontline and casual roles, and from non-English backgrounds, were most affected by lost working hours during the pandemic.  Good added that instability regarding working hours and shifts present an ongoing challenge for workers who are trying to make ends meet. Meanwhile, customer aggression and retail theft have been on the rise which is driving turnover and disillusionment within the industry. “We’ve heard from workers that the low wages offered in frontline retail work act as a disincentive to stay in the industry over the long-term, discouraging workers from aspiring to a career in retail,’ Good said. “The flexibility that retail jobs offer is highly valued by workers, but they weigh this up against the wages on offer.” National secretary for the SDA, the union for fast food, warehouse and online retail workers, Gerard Dwyer said that it has received growing feedback from members about increased workload. This, he believes, is partly due to staff hours not being allocated correctly. “Automated rostering platforms are spreading and many of these ‘round down’ when allocating staff hours. For example, the AI platform allocates 4.5 staff hours for a particular task, then that is rounded down to four,” Dwyer said.  “[The] end result is the employee is required to do 4.5 hours work on their four hour shift.” “Make a difficult situation even worse” Dwyer believes that underemployment was already a problem in the retail industry as many staff are working part-time.  The underemployment rate across the Australian economy remained steady at 6.1 per cent. But, according to the Australian Retailers Association in November 2022, young adults aged between 15 and 24 with a disability, are more than twice as likely to be unemployed and face longer periods of unemployment. He said that a cut to rostered hours – rather than lay-offs – will pose a bigger problem amid cost of living challenges. “Further cuts to rostered hours because of a downturn in trade make an already difficult situation even worse for people,” he said. “Workers are already facing serious cost of living pressures to put food on the table [and] to keep a roof over their heads. Any cuts to hours make a difficult predicament even worse.” Recently, staff across a range of global brands – including Starbucks, Amazon and Amazon – have performed a range of actions including unionising, striking and signalling future strikes to push for better working conditions. Retail and Fast Food Workers Union secretary Josh Cullinan recently told Inside Retail that large businesses were failing to provide workers with secure jobs, living wages and fair conditions. Dwyer said that it’s not easy for staff to communicate their concerns about increasing workload, or having to work longer hours, and that their ability to do so depends on the management from site to site.  He added that the SDA welcomed the government’s intervention in the annual wage review with the Fair Work Commission last year, and accepted at face value its concern that wages are not keeping pace with inflation. However, he noted that its members’ responses have been clear. “A wage increase in line with cost of living increases is critical for them, their families and the economy,” he said.