For over two weeks,1500 Woolworths workers across 4 distribution centres in Victoria and NSW have been striking for better working conditions and pay. Rather than lifting and stacking boxes from the early hours of the morning, distribution workers can now be seen lining the entrances to their warehouses, holding placards that read “Woolworths, we are not robots! Respect us!”
This demand refers to a “worker performance management program” that Woolworths introduced earlier this year, which is also known as “The Framework.”
According to a report from the United Workers Union (UWU), the Framework presupposes that “every task of a warehouse worker can be predetermined, categorised, and assigned a time limit.”
The report goes on to describe expectations that workers meet 100% capacity “of every measured minute of their shift.” If they fail to do so, they are placed on a twelve week ‘coaching’ program called “the Glidepath.”
The Framework reveals the dystopian Amazon-esque conditions that corporations such as Woolworths are keen to implement in the pursuit of profit. Striking Woolworths workers know this all too well. The Erskine Park distribution centre in Western Sydney is the most productive warehouse in the country, yet its workers are still being pressured by their managers to increase their speed and efficiency on the job.
“[Woolworths’ competition with Coles] is like a Formula 1 race”, one worker from the Erskine Park picket remarked.
Rightfully, another striking worker questioned, “If our productivity is so bad, how did [Woolworths] make a $1.7 billion dollar profit margin?”
This argument cuts through the notion that the Framework is “in the interests of everybody,” as Woolworth’s management have pitched to their employees, and points to its real purpose – ruthless profiteering. The UWU argues that the Framework “assumes human labour can be rationalised to such an extent as to render it machine-like”, by “controlling the worker and every aspect of the labour process, minute to minute”.
What this looks like in practice is the removal of any conscious component of labour. Human thoughts are replaced with a headset that incessantly recites instructions to the worker on what to pick and pack, that intermittently tells them whether their productivity targets are being met. These measures bring to mind the words of Henry Ford: “why is it every time I ask for a pair of hands, a brain comes attached?”
“They want it to be a robotic style warehouse,” David* said. “We are human. We are social animals. They can’t expect us to keep quiet and keep on working all day long”.
The adverse psychological impacts of the Framework are evident – isolation and alienation from coworkers, certainly, but some of its more insidious impacts are behavioral. For example, David said that when he’s at home with his family and needs them to repeat something, he finds himself subconsciously asking “and again,” which is the command workers use when they want their headsets to repeat automated voice instructions.
The Framework has massively eroded workplace safety as workers are pressured to cut corners in order to meet their productivity targets. Woolworths claim in its Code of Conduct that “no task is so urgent that you cannot take the time to do it safely”, yet workers are constantly reminded of their need to meet 100% efficiency: from the robotic voice in their ears, to the leaderboards that display everyone’s efficiency rate, to the managers that watch from their office or follow workers with a checklist. With the threat of discipline and potential sacking for not meeting these extreme quotas, it is unsurprising that accidents and injuries occur.
A tragic example of this was the death of Basel Brikha in June 2023. Brikha died having sustained injuries when dozens of pallets collapsed on him at the Minchinbury distribution centre in NSW. Recalling this occupational fatality, a worker at Erskine Park questioned “Was that worthwhile? How many deaths are acceptable?”
The Woolworths strike is an incredible step in the right direction, because without resistance, greedy corporations and CEOs will continue to sacrifice health and safety measures while extracting as much labour from workers as possible. The Amazon warehouses in the US show the worst of this profiteering. CEO Andy Jassy, successor to Jeff Bezos, is raking in millions while his workers are subject to serious injuries at over double the rate of non-Amazon warehouses in America, while receiving wages so low that they are eligible for food stamps.
The fact that supermarket shelves across Australia are bare shows the strike is working. The only way workers can fight for their wages and conditions is to hit the system where it hurts, by withholding their labour and going on strike.
On Tuesday this week, Woolworths announced a loss of $50 million.
David, who said this was his first strike, explained: “I think this is for a good cause. It’s not for us. It’s for future workers. For the kids coming out of school or university, students working here to pay their fees, it’s for them as well”.
“If this [Framework] doesn’t get stopped now, in future they might make it worse”.
“This is not the eighteen-hundreds, we are trying to make life easier for everyone, not to give them back pain.”
The University of Sydney’s Student Representative Council (SRC) has officially donated to the strike fund organised by the UWU, and student activists have been on the picket line, standing in solidarity with striking workers.
The Electrical Trades Union has donated $50,000 to the fund.
To support the Woolies strike, donate to the strike fund here or come join the picket line at Erskine Park!
*Name changed at the interviewee’s request.
