Woolworths under fire for refusing to acknowledge workers deserve minimum wage. Photo by Janie Barrett.

In a parliamentary inquiry yesterday, the supermarket giant was castigated by Senator Tony Sheldon, saying they irresponsibly bypassed sourcing standards by being complicit with the exploitation of UberEats workers.

Woolworths actions have been taken as a refusal to acknowledge that workers deserve a minimum wage, and an avoidance to “tell the truth” about their delivery drivers’ working conditions.

“Numerous academic reports of UberEats work have been paid significantly below the minimum wage on average about, $10.42 an hour in some cases, as low as $6.67 an hour,” the senator stated.

“They don't show their workers receive a living wage,” he continued. “Aren't you perpetuating a starvation wages strategy if you don’t have proper oversight and require these companies to be paying workers comp and paying minimum wages?”

After claims revealed that delivery drivers were often being underpaid, with many dying while on the job, third-party delivery services such as UberEats and Deliveroo have been scrutinised for their inactions.

Woolworths representative Laura McManus defended the company’s use of delivery services, reasoning, “The follow-up and active verification of our (responsible sourcing) standards has not yet extended to what we would call our non-trade supply chain, which is where the Uber partnership falls.”

She insisted it is not within their company’s responsibilities to make sure outsourced companies upheld their workers’ rights.

“This work is determined to be independent contracting. That is what the Fair Work Commission has determined it to be. We‘re operating well within that,” she continued.

Senator Tony Sheldon said Woolworths was ‘perpetuating a starvation wages strategy’. Photo from The Australian.

Another Woolworths representative stated that the records on the underpayment of UberEats employees did not apply to them, and he contended that there was no evidence of workers earning such low wages while delivering their products.

“We don‘t have any evidence of someone earning $6.67 whilst delivering for Woolworths on any of our platforms and we don’t believe that’s the case,” Tom Windeyer said.

“If there was evidence of particular participants really earning $6.67 while delivering for us, I would want to investigate.”

But by refusing to say that minimum wage should be paid, Senator Sheldon said that Woolworths had already refused to show responsibility for the workers’ human rights.

“You're paying delivery companies, not wanting to know what they’re actually paying, and you raise that whatever somebody accepts as a payment is then appropriate.”

This article is based on an article written by Helena Burke for news.com.au.

 

[Vinylted]

This is all quite confusing to me, I gather that the Senator is saying that whenever someone employs a sub- contractor they are responsible to see that the subbie pays his people the correct wage. What a load of codswallop! For example if I call Jim's mowing to mow my lawn, and pay over the phone to the franchisee, I am still then responsible for what he pays the bloke with the mower? No wonder we have politicians like Senator Sheldon.