Employees likely include 5,000 former, current salaried staff
Retail firm Woolworths has revealed that thousands of its employees might have been underpaid in the last seven years, according to reports.
The New Zealand Herald reported that Woolworths has found two potential issues affecting salaried staff during a review in 2022.
The issues involved some staff members not being paid correctly for extra hours, or working on days that were recorded as annual leave.
"As we're just starting this process, there isn't enough information available for us to determine exactly which team members or stores may have been impacted and to what extent," Woolworths said as quoted by Radio New Zealand.
The organisation, however, said that it contacted around 5,000 former and current salaried store team members who worked for them between 2015 and 2022 who could have been affected by the issues.
"The majority of our 22,000 team members are not salaried and we expect a limited number of our total team to have been impacted by these issues. We expect any remediation owed to be paid out from mid-2024," Woolworths said as quoted by RNZ.
The retail firm also reached out to the FIRST Union to seek assistance in tracking who may have been affected by the issues.
"There's some difficulties in tracking those who may be affected so we've sent stuff out to our members as well encouraging anyone who thinks they may have been affected in that way to come forward and claim what they're owed," union chief executive Bill Bradford told the New Zealand Herald.
Bradford called the situation a "disgrace," and in a separate report said the situation was a "very deliberate act" by some managers.
The union, however, was satisfied with how Woolworths reached out to them upon discovering the issue in 2022.
Meanwhile, Woolworths also said that it has "proactively engaged" with the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment (MBIE).
MBIE's Head of Compliance and Enforcement Simon Humphries told the Herald that Woolworths has demonstrated "commitment to ensuring the issues are remediated and the underlying processes and behaviours rectified so the issues do not occur again in the future."
