Warehouse workers see red at timetable

Unionised staff at the Warehouse plan to hand out complaint cards to customers to pressure the company into hiring more staff.

About 2150 of the retail chain's 7500 staff have shunned the house union run by the company's former human resources manager and signed up to a bid by the National Distribution Union to get its first collective contract for the business.

Asked, "Are you overworked?" about 150 of them at an Auckland meeting yesterday roared, "Yes!"

Asked, "Is Project Invigorate working?" they roared just as loudly: "No!" The project, rolled out to all 86 Warehouse stores this year, has reassigned staff hours to match customer demand.

Nathan Irwin, 26, an evening security officer at the Auckland Airport Warehouse, said the effect at the airport store was to force day staff into night shelf-filling jobs which disrupted their families.

"They wanted a majority of the team to do night-fill. They wanted the Monday-to-Fridayers to start doing at least one weekend day," he said. "Everyone's hours that were not suitable for them [the company] were changed. For example, if you normally had an early evening finish you would have to do afternoon starts and night starts. Basically you'd have no life."

He said the company refused to hire part-time staff to cover the peak times, with the result that the remaining staff often could not cope with the workload.

"Some days you can have, on a Wednesday or Friday, some of our busiest days, just three people in the departments covering 10 to 12 departments between them, and one, maybe two, checkout operators," he said. "We have a few Christmas casuals now, but three months ago we had only one operator on Monday and Tuesday nights. We would get busy but we couldn't open up any more checkouts because there was no one to put on them."

A 54-year-old woman at another store, who has worked for the Warehouse for 14 years, said the company used to be a "people first" organisation.

"All the staff were happy in their job. The managers used to be more flexible with the hours, they understood our personal circumstances, they used to work around our lives instead of us trying to work around the company's life. We used to do a Christmas float every year for the town, the store used to write off lollies to give to the kids. We used to be really involved in the community."

She said things changed when company founder Sir Stephen Tindall stepped down as managing director in 2001. Now staff had been told to work hours they didn't want.

Mr Oosterman said the union was not seeking a general pay rise, but wanted a $1.50 hourly allowance for night-fill workers who now get the same as day workers. It also wants the company to commit to replace staff when they take annual leave and, if possible, when they are sick.

Warehouse operations manager Karl Parker said the company was still willing to talk and had offered mediation after negotiations broke down last week. He said no one had been forced to work against their will.

"We have consulted 7500 team members at three separate meetings [for each person]. Of all those, only 28 team members have gone to mediation," he said. "We manage and assess workload daily, weekly and monthly. It's relatively scientific. We have a very comprehensive understanding of workload pressures in stores and adjust them as need be."

Warehouse sales dropped by 0.2 per cent in the year to August, but the tighter staff management helped to boost operating profit by 6.6 per cent.

Chief executive Ian Morrice earned a $1.6 million performance bonus on top of his $2.1 million base salary.