Dear current and former salaried team members,
We unreservedly apologise after a review found many of our salaried store team members working in Woolworths Supermarkets and Metro stores have not been paid in full compliance with the General Retail Industry Award (GRIA).
We began the review earlier this year after the implementation of a new Enterprise Agreement (EA) in Woolworths Supermarkets and Metro stores. The review highlighted an inconsistency in pay for a number of salaried store team members compared to team members paid under the new EA.
Annual salaries for store team members are set to cover ordinary working hours and reasonable overtime. However, team members are entitled to be paid the higher of their contractual salary entitlements, or what they otherwise would have earned for actual hours worked under the GRIA.
The review has found the number of hours worked, and when they were worked, were not adequately factored into the individual salary settings for some salaried store team members.
The more than 100,000 team members who are covered by our Enterprise Agreements are not affected.
The review is being extended to all Woolworths Group businesses to ensure that all relevant awards requirements have been met for salaried team members.
As a business we pride ourselves on putting our team first, and in this case we have seriously let you down.
Woolworths Group is committed to fully rectifying payment shortfalls and an extensive plan is in place to ensure award covered salaried team members’ pay is correct and compliant in the future.
We unreservedly apologise to all affected team members and are deeply sorry for not paying them their full entitlements.
The highest priority for Woolworths Group right now is addressing this issue, and ensuring that it doesn’t happen again.
If you think you might be impacted by this pay review, we encourage you to read through the FAQs for more information.
We would also encourage you to register your up-to-date contact details on the website, so we can make contact with you if we have updates to share on your salary review.
We thank you for your patience as we work through this process.
Warm regards,
Brad Banducci
We recently implemented new Enterprise Agreements for Woolworths Supermarkets and Metro, BIG W, BWS and Dan Murphy’s. When we implemented the Supermarkets & Metro Agreement (EA) earlier this year, we heard feedback from some of our salaried store team members about their pay relative to our EA team members.
Based on this feedback, we began a review to analyse payments and terms and conditions for our salaried store team members in Woolworths Supermarkets and Metro stores against the applicable modern award - the General Retail Industry Award (GRIA).
The review found that many of their salaries were not set to a level that would meet their entitlements under the GRIA - entitlements such as penalty rates and loadings for shifts worked outside of ordinary hours.
Since identifying that many of our salaried store team members in Supermarkets and Metro have not been paid their full entitlements under the GRIA, we have now made the decision to extend the scope of the review to all award-covered salaried roles across the Woolworths Group.
The review will look at an individual level whether our team have been paid correctly by analysing timesheets, clocking data, pay records and rosters.
We are committed to paying back all entitlements owed in full.
A modern award (sometimes just called an “award”) sets the minimum terms and conditions of employment for the team members it covers. Our salaried store team members are covered by the General Retail Industry Award (GRIA). GRIA sets out minimum entitlements for retail employees such as penalty rates for certain times of the day, weekends and public holidays. It also includes allowances such as meal allowances and rostering rules. Some other modern awards apply to other team members across the Group.
Our salaried team members in stores are paid a ‘rolled up’ total amount that includes their hourly base rate of pay and an amount for these additional entitlements set out in the GRIA (such as penalty rates and allowances).
However, our analysis has revealed that some salaries are not high enough to cover all of the necessary entitlements under GRIA, considering the particular hours which some of our team work.
Many of our salaried team who regularly work early mornings, late nights, weekends and public holidays may be entitled to additional payments for these shifts.
We pay our salaried store team members a ‘rolled up’ amount which is intended to cover all of the entitlements payable under the General Retail Industry Award (GRIA) based on the roster patterns our team members work. However, we’ve identified that some of our salaried store team members in Supermarkets and Metro stores have not received their full entitlements under the GRIA.
While annual salaries for team members were set to cover ordinary working hours and some overtime worked in the course of their roles, the review has found that many of our team members’ salaries were not set at a level high enough to cover all of their entitlements under the GRIA. Therefore, salaried team members who regularly work very early mornings, late nights, weekends and public holidays, may be entitled to additional payments for some or all of these shifts.
Until the full review is complete we won’t know how many salaried team members are entitled to additional payments. There are approximately 19,000 team members currently working within Woolworths Group businesses in Australia who are paid an annual salary. Where these team members are award-covered, along with former award-covered salaried team members, they will be included within the scope of the review.
When we implemented the new Woolworths Supermarkets Agreement 2018 (EA) earlier this year we heard feedback from some of our salaried store team members about their pay relative to our EA team members. Based on this feedback we commenced an analysis of payments and terms and conditions for salaried store team members in Woolworths Supermarkets and Metro stores.
To be thorough, we are extending this review to our other retail brands - but as the issue first arose within Supermarkets and Metro, this is where we have started.
The review process is complex and requires us to review very large volumes of data. We expect to finalise our review by the end of the financial year.
Phase one of the review will take place before Christmas 2019
Phase two of the review will take place over the remainder of the financial year
For more information, please see our FAQs
