Photo: Ziming Li
Whether supermarket workers can refuse to use controversial headset technology will depend a lot on their contract wording, one employment lawyer says.
It was reported this week that headsets used to assign jobs and rank performance at Woolworths distribution centres in Australia were being used by the main supermarket chains in New Zealand, prompting union concerns.
In Australia, staff have complained that they add unrealistic time pressures on workers. A Guardian article said one woman reported her headset told her it should take 14 minutes to pick 96 items across multiple locations. Others complained they were not given flexibility around things such as bathroom breaks.
Foodstuffs said it had used voice-directed systems with headsets in distribution centres for 20 years.
"At the start of each task, the headset provides a recommended time for safe completion. Once the task is finished, it reports the actual completion time. These time benchmarks are based on what a trained team member is expected to safely accomplish.
"Ensuring the health, wellbeing, and safety of our teams is our top priority. Providing comprehensive training that promotes safe work practices is one of the many ways we're reducing workplace injuries across our distribution centres."
At Woolworths, a spokesperson said it used engineered standards, as was standard in grocery and manufacturing warehouses.
"These standards help us with effective workforce planning, forecasting the number of labour hours required, and identifying opportunities for training and areas for improvement in the distribution centre.
"In New Zealand, the standards are set in conjunction with our local unions, considering various factors to ensure products can be picked and moved efficiently and safely. Safety is at the core of everything we do, and doing a job safely is inherently built into the standards."
Employment lawyer Alison Maezler, from Hesketh Henry, said employers could implement new technology as long as there was nothing in an employment agreement or existing employment policies that prevented them from doing so.
"[There can be] nothing in the employment agreement, or any law, that would make it unlawful or unreasonable to introduce the new technology. For example, if the new technology was collecting personal information about the employees, then the Privacy Act would be very relevant. If the Privacy Act was not being complied with, then the employer would have real difficulty enforcing a requirement to use the new technology.
"There seems to be a real question in this case about what exactly the headsets are being used for - whether it is monitoring the employees' movements, what information is being collected, what is being monitored, and what the information it is being used for.
"I don't know the background to this, but you would have hoped that all of this detail would have been shared with employees as part of the implementation process."
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