Woolworths now caught out underpaying their staff

[Himeno]

The managers quoted are mainly departmental managers, people who are responsible for the deli, produce, meat, etc, of a store. They once had thousands of them, until they changed things early this year.

Dozens of Ballarat Woolworths staff removed from positions under re-structure

Up to 90 staff at Woolworths supermarkets in Ballarat could be removed from their managerial positions under a...

www.thecourier.com.au

The average store has just gone from 9 salaried staff to 5.
Stores used to have between 6 and 13 salaried staff, depending on size, to between 3 and 7.

 

[bPeteb]

Calling for QF to cut their ties with Woolworths would be a little hypocritical seeing that Qantas has also been found to be underpaying it's staff.As have the ABC and Bunnings.Seems to be a problem with our laws

I definitely wasn’t calling for it Ron, just wanted to get the views from those who’ve been calling for the Rockpool affiliation to be severed.

Tampering with timesheets definitely criminal but was it a direct instruction from the top or managers trying to meet cost cutting that comes as a result from instructions from the top. Problem with laws or corporate culture? What’s more important - shareholder returns or staff. I know for the very large corporation that I work for it’s the former, no question...

 

[amaroo]

The average store has just gone from 9 salaried staff to 5.
Stores used to have between 6 and 13 salaried staff, depending on size, to between 3 and 7.

That's a big number when you multiply it by the 1024 supers they operate. Then they have the other 2,088 branded stores like BWS, Big W, DM....

 

[Himeno]

That's a big number when you multiply it by the 1024 supers they operate. Then they have the other 2,088 branded stores like BWS, Big W, DM....

They don't have 1024 supermarkets. It's around 980.
The others are Metro stores, which come under a different brand in the group. They are under the same EBA as supermarkets, but have a different org chart. The Metro stores were not impacted by the recent restructure.

The current Supermarkets store contact list gives the following numbers (including new stores yet to open)
NSW/ACT 274
WA 101
SA/NT 91
QLD 234
VIC/TAS 274

 

[Melburnian1]

They don't have 1024 supermarkets. It's around 980...

VIC/TAS 274

Given you work for it, you could use the term 'we' not 'they.'

Strange that small TAS is linked in with VIC as IIRC, one cannot use a Woolworths Rewards card in Tasmania due to historic issues related to how the supermarkets were acquired.

 

[amaroo]

They don't have 1024 supermarkets. It's around 980.
The others are Metro stores, which come under a different brand in the group. They are under the same EBA as supermarkets, but have a different org chart. The Metro stores were not impacted by the recent restructure.

The current Supermarkets store contact list gives the following numbers (including new stores yet to open)
NSW/ACT 274
WA 101
SA/NT 91
QLD 234
VIC/TAS 274

What's 44 stores in the scheme of things

 

[Vic]

Your'e forgetting who the leader of the 'reasonable union' was, and the great deal he did for those workers on his climb up the ladder to success?

What? They've been no leaders of the SDA climbing ladders to success. Who is the person you're on about.
The SDA is very right, they recently gave away sunday penalty rates. I totally agree that Union screws their members. Just none of their leadership have climbed any ladders.

 

[drron]

Don Farrell,Kate Doust.Even joe De Bruyn becoming President of the Global Union movement.SDA thought to be really strong in SDA and having their backing gives you a head start into politics-eg Kate Ellis.
Though I think the previous poster was mistakenly alluding to a recent federal Opposition leader.

 

[offshore171]

I'm reminded of the maxim 'never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence' - by any metric our I

I guess the counter to the incompetence argument is that these gross payment errors seem to nearly always be in the company’s favour.

If it were simply happening by accident, you’d expect roughly a 50/50 split of underpayments and overpayments.

But that’s not happening, it’s almost entirely one way traffic, and in the case of Rockpool the allegations suggest it was an enduring business model.

 

[CaptJCool]

After seeing Russell Zimmerman from the RTA on TV LAST NIGHT giving his examples of if you hold the keys and open up the doors or close them you’re paid more than the average joe, When you count cash at the end of shift you’re paid for the after hours time.... and I thought really there must be some dumb small business operators so I looked up the award

MA000004: General Retail Industry Award 2020

Seriously seems these people cant count to 2 let alone 6......

https://national.sda.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Team-Member-EA-Booklet.pdf

Enterprise Agreements | SDA | Union for Retail, Fast Food & Warehouse Workers

The Union for Workers in Retail. Fast Food. Warehousing

www.sda.org.au

 

[33kft]

If it were simply happening by accident, you’d expect roughly a 50/50 split of underpayments and overpayments.

There is a big difference between simple accounting errors and errors applying the appropriate award rate to an employee. Firstly, if you pay your employee at above award rate, that is not considered an error and is not going to be rectified unless it's a straight up accounting error (ie we paid more than the payslip said we would). If you paid what the payslip said but it is above the award rate, that's just the way it is.

Secondly, there's 122 different awards with different rates for base, overtime, and various penalty rates, and different levels depending on the duties of the individual employee. Missing any one of these is an underpayment. Unless employers just pay penalty rates at the highest level by default, it is not just as likely that they would pay over rather than under.

 

[dajop]

I guess the counter to the incompetence argument is that these gross payment errors seem to nearly always be in the company’s favour.

If it were simply happening by accident, you’d expect roughly a 50/50 split of underpayments and overpayments.

I am guessing if they did nothing about overpayments, we might not hear about it.

 

[offshore171]

I am guessing if they did nothing about overpayments, we might not hear about it.

To the contrary, I think the accused companies would be proclaiming it from the hilltops as evidence of their ‘innocent mistakes’.

Plus, wouldn’t a gross overpayment incident be reportable to the ASX under continuous disclosure rules?

 

[dajop]

To the contrary, I think the accused companies would be proclaiming it from the hilltops as evidence of their ‘innocent mistakes’.

Plus, wouldn’t a gross overpayment incident be reportable to the ASX under continuous disclosure rules?

I think 33kft has articulated my sentiments better.

 

[Melburnian1]

Who would want to be working in a payroll/HR department if these awards and agreements have become so complex?

 

[Vic]

Don Farrell,Kate Doust.Even joe De Bruyn becoming President of the Global Union movement.SDA thought to be really strong in SDA and having their backing gives you a head start into politics-eg Kate Ellis.

Hardly shining examples, Don Farrell is just a seat filler, hardly a successful climb to anything in that mob. Kate Ellis seemed to be an ok sports minister.

Though I think the previous poster was mistakenly alluding to a recent federal Opposition leader.

I agree. Still if someone is going to make statements it'd be good to get basic facts correct.

 

[Himeno]

Who would want to be working in a payroll/HR department if these awards and agreements have become so complex?

It's all computerized. Pay is made by the computer from the hours logged in Kronos via the finger scan, this "workjam" app, or manually on the adjustment sheet.
Store level office staff don't need to look at agreements unless they need to fix a problem.

Pay problems will come up for the following reasons:
Store office staff did not enter a manual adjustment correctly (sick, roster change, etc)
People Services (centralized HR) did not enter a new salaried contract correctly
People Services did not enter a new EBA correctly
Success Factors did not transfer a permanent roster change or leave approval to Kronos
Kronos stuffed up. (eg, putting someone on 15 weeks unpaid leave when they aren't and not let anyone change it)

The media might be tossing around large numbers of awards and agreements, but in Woolworths case, they have like 8 EBAs and 5 awards that apply to the group, and each time an award for a part of the group has changed, Kronos and Success Factors have been disabled to everyone except People Services while they update the awards in the system.

All of the common ways for pay to be messed up is easily noticed, if staff actually know what is in their agreement/contract and check their payslips. Of course, most don't.
For an underpayment to be this large (enough with the quoted amount being lower and claiming to cover fewer staff then it really does), and go on for so long, is for someone in Norwest to have decided to underpay people, likely in amounts each pay period that are too small to be noticed by any one person.

 

[33kft]

For an underpayment to be this large (enough with the quoted amount being lower and claiming to cover fewer staff then it really does), and go on for so long, is for someone in Norwest to have decided to underpay people, likely in amounts each pay period that are too small to be noticed by any one person.

You obviously have a decent view inside the org, but the suggestion someone is conspiring to remit less than the reported salary (which should be picked up in no time when the outgoings don't align with the payroll) to thousands of people who simply have to check the deposit amount in their account to confirm this was happening, with clearly no board approval of this (otherwise why are they unwinding it and taking the bad publicity now?) and to no benefit of the organisation and what must be minor benefit to the employee (unless they're paying commission to accounts teams on not making payments? which I doubt) makes no sense.

I have been on the other side of this equation. When I was running a business, I had a single employee who was performing a duty above their pay level for their award. I had no system to catch this (for better or worse - I could have counted my salaried employees on one hand) and they took it to the fair work ombusdman rather than to me, for reasons I can't explain given we had a good relationship and I'd have resolved it then and there (but perhaps they didn't believe that? it is what it is) and I was called in, informed I was underpaying staff and audited. So.. I am certainly in no position to comment on who is wrong or right here, but as someone who has been through the system I can confidently say your scenario would have been picked up by me and my accountant in about 5 minutes using a spreadsheet, whereas my scenario required reading the FWO's banding for the award and comparing it to the employee's responsibilities each time they changed to pick up a potential underpayment.

 

[Himeno]

What's more reasonable?
Repeated keying errors when updating contracts and awards, which are done when the systems are offline to everyone else outside that office and are checked by a number of people over a number of days.
or a small group of people clawing back 2 or 3 cents a week times thousands of payments when they know most people don't check their pay slips or read their agreements?

 

[33kft]

or a small group of people clawing back 2 or 3 cents a week times thousands of payments when they know most people don't check their pay slips or read their agreements?

Because everybody reconciles transactions as a minimum requirement before an accountant will ever sign off on books. When you're paying staff as a supermarket chain, you aren't doing it in cash, this is not anything that can't be reconciled at a glance. Any difference between the payslip and the remittance must be picked up not only by the accountant, but in today's world of Single Touch Payroll by the ATO as well. You think sending out Group Certificates saying you paid someone more than you did and having them taxed at a higher level than the actual income and everything else that comes with that would not be noticed? These are periodical payments, they happen at least 12 times a year per person, this is hardly "going beneath the radar".

Now the key question - how was this only the case for certain job roles? Do you think they underpaid management roles specifically, by a few cents, thinking that wouldn't be noticed? It makes no sense next to the alternate which is that those particular roles were wrongly compensated due to a specific parameter that was wrong in calculating their entitlements. Almost exactly the situation I described for myself previously.