Woolworths supermarket staff, including 13 from Alexandra, walked off the job from 12pm until 2pm yesterday.

The strike comes a month after earlier action was taken by staff, supported by FIRST Union, to raise social awareness regarding staffing conditions.

To do that staff wore stickers while working on the shop floor to highlight the situation.

It was hoped last month’s action would prompt their employer to consider a living wage and address chronic understaffing issues.

However, a lack of action prompted staff from more than 190 stores throughout the country to take further action yesterday, with a down-tools strike over a two-hour period.

Among them was Connie Prins, a union worker at Woolworths Alexandra.

She said it was hoped the company would “take the bargaining more seriously in the next round of discussions”.

Woolworths Alexandra staff during yesterday's strike action. PHOTO: The Central App

FIRST Union national secretary Rudd Hughes said Woolworths workers were enthusiastic about their walkout, despite frustrations after 13 days of pay negotiations, with the company still far apart on key issues like pay, safety, and staffing.

He said Woolworths had offered minimal wage increases below the rising household cost of living, sought reductions to workers’ existing employment conditions, and proposed pay rates that are falling behind the competitors.

He said raising safe staffing standards seemed to be more of an inconvenience than an opportunity to deter rising levels of abuse and theft by customers.

“They’re trying to deal with increasing violence against staff but will not address the number of people working in stores.

“Workers are left feeling that protecting previous profit levels is more important to Woolworths than protecting workers in stores.

"Their solution to systemic understaffing is a nebulous project of ‘multi-skilling’ workers rather than increasing the actual number of people working on shop floors during busy hours, nights and weekends. It’s disingenuous,” he said.

"My message for Woolworths is - explain yourselves. Come out publicly and justify why you don’t think your workers deserve a living wage that enables them to thrive rather than barely survive."

A Woolworths New Zealand spokesperson told The Central App it believed it had brought a "strong offer" to the table.

“Making sure our team is paid fairly has always been a priority for us and we’ve brought a strong offer to the table in our discussions with FIRST Union. This includes a wage rate increase for our store team between 6.8 - 10.1 per cent over two years, further to the 19% increase we agreed in 2022. We are one of the leaders in pay for our sector."

They said the company offered a range of team benefits and since 2022 it has included improved sick leave benefits, increased bereavement leave, increased primary caregiver leave to 12 full weeks of paid leave and introduced secondary caregiver leave of four weeks, expanded the unsocial hours allowance for teams working between 10pm to 1am. improved its team discount so it could get 5 per cent off on all grocery items, 10 per cent off fresh and own brand products and two 10 per cent discount days per month.

“Additionally, we’re underway with a $45 million investment in making our stores safer including team safety cameras in all stores, trolley locks, fog cannons and double-entry gates. We’re also looking at bringing in duress alarms for those working in isolated areas.

“In the current challenging economic environment, our customers need us to provide affordable food. We have to balance increasing costs in our business so we can provide more value for our customers." 

They said the company would continue to engage with FIRST Union in good faith and thanked its customers for their understanding.

Read more: Woolworths staff to strike