Perth Coles Manager Under Fire After Asking Staff To Work For Pizza

The bosses of supermarket chain Coles have condemned the actions of the manager of a suburban Perth store, who posted a notice asking staff to work for free in exchange for pizza.   

The manager asked staff members to stay behind on a Sunday night to perform stocktake duty for four hours, saying that it would be “wonderful” if every one of the 65 people at the store were to pitch in. 
The request is especially galling at a time when workers across a number of industries in Australia are facing Sunday penalty rate cuts, and staff at the supermarket were none too happy. 
After the notice went up, a number contacted WA’s Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers Association to register their complaints – shockingly, the promise of “plentiful” free pizza wasn’t enough in exchange for four hours’ free work. 
The SDA contacted individual manager to put the fear of god in him and remind him that workers must legally be paid for the hours they put in, and also called Coles senior management, who were said to be “aghast” at the request.
In a statement to ABC Radio Perth, the supermarket giant said that the request was “completely out of step with Coles’ way of working” and promised that “any team members working at that time would be paid as normal.”
Pizza is delicious, but getting paid fairly for the hours you put in is even better. You can read the full text of the notice below:
 
Dear team, I’ve got a personal request for you all. As you can see we have an enormous amount of stock out the back in the stockroom. I am asking team members to give me 4hrs free labour. Yes, it is a big ask and I would not be requesting this unless it was absolutely necessary. 

On Sunday the 19th I plan to work through 6x pallets of stock as well as 78x cages of stock out the back. I plan to kick off the evening at 5:30pm and work through to 9:30pm. Pizza will be plentiful at 9:30pm.

We have 65 team members. It would be wonderful if everyone could be involved as this would make the job so much easier and may even allow us to leave earlier which would be fantastic. 

The excess stock does affect everyone in the store and none more so than [blank] who has to do the gap scan everyday under these really difficult conditions. Therefore I hope that you can give of your time to help the store get on top of this once and for all.
Photo: Wayne’s World.
Source: ABC Radio Perth.

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