Eudunda Farmers lawsuit expands to include 357 workers claiming for millions of dollars in underpayment

An SA supermarket chain with stores in 20 towns is now facing a multimillion-dollar lawsuit after nearly 300 more workers came forward to claim they were underpaid.

More than 350 workers have accused a South Australian supermarket chain of underpaying them with a compensation bill estimated to run into the millions of dollars.

Eudunda Farmers, which runs 21 supermarkets across SA, has been taken to the Federal Court by the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association, which represents retail workers.

The proceedings began in 2021 with 64 current and former employees accusing the company of underpaying or misclassifying their employment.

Since then, 293 more workers have come forward and joined the legal action, bringing the total number of claimants to 357.

The SDA has also added the managing director of the company to the lawsuit as a respondent.

Eudunda Farmers, which runs 21 Foodland and IGA stores in rural and regional areas, has been accused of underpaying hundreds of workers. Picture: Russell Millard

The estimated cost of the lawsuit if successful is expected to exceed $4m.

Eudunda Farmers as a company runs the Bordertown and Kingston Foodland stores and the Millicent IGA.

However, it is the major shareholder in six other companies that in turn run stores in regional towns across the state.

One of the primary grounds for compensation is that 275 workers were misclassified as lower-level employees, despite performing more senior roles.

Other claims include 356 workers saying they were not paid a laundry allowance, 136 alleging they were not paid extra for working in cold areas of the store as required under law and 357 arguing they were not given rostered breaks.

Some workers have said they were kept on casual contracts despite working regular hours at the stores. One worker had been working at a Eudunda Farmers store since 1989 but remained on a casual contract.

In court documents seen by The Advertiser, a senior employee of one of the Eudunda Farmers subsidiaries is accused of telling a worker “don’t go making trouble for yourself or you know what the answer will be” after a worker asked to have be placed on a permanent part-time contract.

The range of workers claiming to have been underpaid includes checkout supervisors and operators, forklift operators, meat department workers and store managers.

One acting store manager was allegedly paid as a level-one retail worker despite leading weekly meetings, opening and closing the store and making managers weekly summaries.

She was paid an extra $30 per shift for acting as a manager.

SDA secretary Josh Peak said the scale of the alleged underpayments was “shocking”.

“Companies like Eudunda Farmers Ltd have the capacity to make sure they pay people

correctly and should be aware of their legal requirements,” he said.

“Too many employers are getting away with deliberately underpaying workers and not having to pay the consequences.”

Eudunda Farmers has denied the claim and the case has been scheduled for trial in June next year.