Four-day work week looms at Woolworths

A significant agreement between the supermarket giant and the shop assistants union will lock in more flexible rostering practices across the retail sector.

Thousands of Woolworths employees will be able to work a four-day week. Picture: Getty Images

Thousands of Woolworths employees will be able to work a four-day week under a significant agreement with the shop assistants union that will lock in more flexible rostering practices across the retail sector.

Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association delegates have backed inserting the four-day week proposal into the new Woolworths enterprise agreement, one of the biggest in the country which covers some 130,000 workers.

Under the proposal, subject to a vote of employees in coming weeks, workers would be able to complete their 38-hour five-day working week over four days by working four 9.5-hour shifts.

As weekends are the busiest days, the four-day arrangement would generally require the employee to work either a Saturday or Sunday shift unless agreed otherwise. Bunnings agreed last year to trial a four-day week.

SDA NSW secretary Bernie Smith said workers would have to work up to four weekend shifts over a four-week period.

“That could be one weekend shift per week i.e. a Saturday or a Sunday, or it could be two weekends working Saturday and Sunday, and two weekends off,” he said. “This is a common retail ­roster.”

The flexibility breakthrough came as the Fair Work Commission endorsed an enterprise agreement at Coles, rejecting objections by the Retail and Fast Food Workers Union.

The agreements at Woolworths and Coles, the latter covering 92,000 workers, commit the companies to annual pay rises for employees in line with increases handed down by the commission’s annual wage review.

Mr Smith said the approach has delivered 23.1 per cent in cumulative pay rises since 2018, compared to a 19 per cent rise in inflation and a 14 per cent increase in the wage price index over the same period.

A commission full bench, led by president Adam Hatcher, accepted the SDA, which backed the Coles deal, represented more than 30,000 Coles employees while the RAFFWU represented fewer than 900 employees in the bargaining process.

The full bench agreed with the RAFFWU that the agreement’s provision for Coles to unilaterally change the hours and days of work of part-time employees should be considered a detriment.

However, it found the agreement improved the position of part-time employees by expanding the circumstances in which part-time employees would be paid overtime and introduced a higher minimum entitlement to hours of work.

The agreement also provides part-time employees with a qualified right to request an increase to their hours which can only be refused on reasonable business grounds. Coles gave undertakings in relation to the operation of voluntary additional shifts.

The full bench said it was satisfied the agreement passed the Fair Work Act’s better-off-overall-test. “The agreement provides terms of employment more beneficial to employees than those in the award, including marginally higher salaries,” it said.

Meanwhile, the commission has challenged a number of employer claims in a series of questions sent to parties as part of its annual wage review deliberations. In a question to the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the commission said the ACCI had submitted that “it needs to be recognised that further increases in the minimum and modern award wages above the rate of average wage growth will disincentiv[ise] enterprise bargaining”.

“Does ACCI have evidence to show that keeping modern award wage growth lower than average wage growth provides an incentive for enterprise bargaining?” the commission asked.

It also challenged the ACCI claim that the expert panel had consistently awarded increases in the minimum and modern award wages that exceeded growth in inflation and the wage price index.