Woolworths says it has started paying back unpaid wages to workers, rejecting suggestions of ‘wage theft’ – ABC News

Posted December 16, 2019 19:34:36

Woolworths says it has started paying back some of the estimated $200 million to $300 million it owes workers.

The supermarket giant told investors at its annual general meeting in Sydney it had started making back payments for the past two years to nearly 6,000 supermarket staff for unpaid wages, superannuation and interest.

Woolworths is facing a class action and an investigation by the Fair Work Ombudsman after the company discovered it had underpaid staff members, including supermarket managers, under the General Retail Industry Award over the past decade.

It is one of a number of big companies, including the ABC, which have admitted to underpaying their workers.

Chairman Gordon Cairns told the meeting Woolworths had gone through worker records for 2018 and 2019 which involved 11 million data points each year.

"To discover we have underpaid so many of our team members has been incredibly disappointing," Mr Cairns said.

Woolworths chief executive Brad Banducci told reporters after the meeting the company was still working through the rest of the payments owed to workers, including in other parts of the company such as department store Big W and bottle shop Dan Murphy's.

"Step one, well progressed, will be done before Christmas," he said.

"And then we'll really get focused in the new year on making sure we do the same analysis across all of the businesses inside the Woolworths Group."

"We hope to have done the first two years of that ideally in the next couple of months and get the whole process wrapped up by the end of June at the latest."

Mr Banducci will forfeit a $2.6 million bonus and Mr Cairns will have his director fees cut by 20 per cent because of the scandal.

Investor Paul Cohen said he wanted to see more accountability at Woolworths for the underpayment scandal.

"I think it's absolutely disgraceful. If they can't work out a payroll then the people who are responsible for payroll should be at the very least questioned if not shown the door," he told the ABC.

"I definitely think that heads should roll.

"There must be people who are responsible for that area who are either very negligent or completely incompetent. So I think they should definitely be shown the door."

Fellow shareholder Joyce Yong agreed.

"I've been a Woolworths shareholder for a long, long time and the things that came out in the news certainly weren't edifying at all."

Mr Banducci denied the underpayment scandal was "wage theft".

"Theft is premeditated. It has a deliberate element to it. And that is not in our case.

"It doesn't mean we don't need to fix it."

The supermarket giant also heard complaints from farm workers who said they were not paid properly by fruit and vegetable suppliers.

Katie Hepworth from the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility called on the company to do more to combat modern slavery and labour violations by suppliers in Australia and overseas.

The company was also grilled about the social impact of its hotels and poker machines business amid allegations two of its hotels in New South Wales supplied free drinks to gaming patrons.

Investors overwhelmingly supported the company's plans to merge its alcohol and pubs businesses, Endeavour Drinks and ALH Group, so they can be spun off into a separate company next year and floated on the stock exchange or sold.

Woolworths is one of the biggest poker machine operators in Australia and the spin-off proposal comes amid public pressure on the company from gambling reform advocates and investors.

Topics:food-and-beverage,industry,business-economics-and-finance,australia

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Woolworths says it has started paying back unpaid wages to workers, rejecting suggestions of 'wage theft' - ABC News