Coles job security in spotlight at Senate inquiry

Coles Group government and industry relations manager Vittoria Bon told a Senate committee the company was dealing with a “heightened” issue.

Supermarket giant Coles has revealed it has 2000 job vacancies and is struggling to fill shifts as Australia continues to experience a very tight labour market.

Coles Group government and industry relations manager Vittoria Bon told a Senate committee the company was dealing with a “heightened” number of empty positions.

Ms Bon fronted an upper house inquiry into work and care arrangements on Monday, where she faced questioning over job security at Coles, which employs about 130,000 people across Australia.

The inquiry heard only up to 15 per cent of staff is employed on a full-time basis, and about 100,000 of these employees work in supermarkets.

It was also revealed during the hearing that Coles’ distribution network – the part of the business which employs the most men – has by far the highest percentage of full-time employees.

Ms Bon said Coles had a pretty even 50-50 split of male and female employees across the business, with slightly more women employed in its supermarkets than men.

Job security at Coles has been examined by a Senate committee. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

But it is a different story in Coles’ 10 distribution centres, where only about 17 per cent of the 3500 employees are women, she said.

In the distribution centres, about 70 per cent of workers are employed on full-time contracts, 20 per cent are permanent part-time and the remaining 10 per cent are casual workers.

Asked about the disparity between the male and female dominated parts of the business, Ms Bon said Coles offered permanent contracts to casual workers across the company but only about 20 per cent of these were accepted.

“It’s because a number of our team members would like flexible or part-time work to accommodate other parts of their time,” she said.

Labor senator Deb O’Neill – the deputy chair of the committee overseeing the hearing – reacted to this explanation with scepticism.

“We’ve been hearing this evidence quite consistently,” she said.

“But it doesn’t seem to match with the evidence we’ve received from people who find themselves in this situation; who find themselves in very precarious employment as the result of (their) status of casual.”

Originally published as Coles job security in spotlight at Senate inquiry