THE COST OF CONVENIENCE

Extended shopping hours are often taken for granted by consumers, but they have had a very real — often negative — effect on workers

Next time you shop at Woolworths after hours or on a Sunday, you might like to think about the worker problems that have been going on behind the scenes, and in particular the brutal battle over the future of full-time staff.

Until 2002 the retailer’s staff were all full-timers working 45 hours a week. But in that year the company began a far-reaching change, only employing workers on a flexi-time basis for 40 hours a week. Ten years later, there were 16,400 flexi-timers and just 590 full-time staff left.

Why the switch? According to Woolies’ analysis, changed shopping patterns made it essential, with customers visiting stores in the evenings and over weekends.

And then there were the significant cost savings of a flexi-time workforce. If all 590 remaining full-timers converted to flexi-time, for example, the company would have saved R24m/year.

But these new market realities created equity problems: most fulltime staff earned more than those on flexi-time, even though flexitime was the new normal. However, from the point of view of most full-timers, the prospects of the new arrangement were not rosy, with reduced salary and benefits.

At first those remaining were “invited” to change. Through a combination of early retirement packages, voluntary severance or acceptance of the flexi-time deal, more came off the full-time roll.

During consultation with the SA Commercial, Catering & Allied Workers Union, even more left the full-time lists. But in late 2012 negotiations ended and Woolies retrenched the last 92.

At the time the union was in the process of negotiating with the company on behalf of 44 who accepted conversion in principle — but these talks ended when what the court would later describe as a “misunderstanding” arose around the terms the union had proposed. This was held to mean that the employer did not properly consider the union’s alternative proposals.

In the labour court, the union won a judgment that the dismissals were procedurally unfair, and all were to be reinstated with full pay.

Woolies challenged this. At the appeal court, the union argued that the 44, who had worked for the company for between 12 and 32 years, had budget commitments that they could not simply drop — home loans, school fees and vehicle repayments.

There were also far-reaching medical aid changes attached to the switch to flexi-time; maternity benefits would reduce significantly; benefits for new fathers were scrapped; study leave “fell away”.

While full-timers worked from 8 am to 5 pm five days a week, with overtime pay on the occasions they worked Saturdays, flexitimers stopped work at 7 pm, worked every Saturday and three out of four Sundays, all without overtime.

Most full-timers would take home considerably less after the switch — in one case a 54% drop — though a few earned more.

Unfair dismissals

The appeal judges said that the company’s misunderstanding of the union’s final proposal was very serious, as it led to the dismissal of some staff who would have benefited if they had converted to the new contract.

While the union and staff conceded that the company needed to restructure the business and that everyone would work flexi-time, the company did not consider alternative ways of managing the specific problem of reduced wages as proposed by the union.

The dismissals were thus held to be substantively, rather than procedurally, unfair. But since the full-time posts had been scrapped, reinstatement was not feasible, said the appeal judges. Instead they ordered compensation payment of 12 months’ full-time salary to all those dismissed.

It is a sobering thought: the effect on other people’s lives of the extended store hours that shoppers have come to take for granted.

Most full-time staff would take home considerably less after the switch — in one case a 54% drop — though a few earned more