A change that could drastically affect workers' shifts has staff at Bunnings Mount Maunganui walking off the job today.
FIRST Union Retail and Finance Secretary Maxine Gay says, "Workers at Bunnings Mount Maunganui are walking off the job at 1pm today after learning that the company is proposing a change which will remove the right to determine their start and finish times."
She says, "While most companies are scrambling to remove this sort of insecure work model, Bunnings is taking off in the other direction."
According to the current collective agreement, Gay says the change can only happen under mutual agreement with the worker.
“Under our current collective agreement Bunnings can only alter start and finish times under mutual agreement with the worker, but now the company is trying to remove mutual agreement and insert a clause that will allow management to chop and change those times at will,” she says.
“This means that a worker might be guaranteed 40 hours per fortnight, but then find that start and finish times chop and change. One week it might be Monday to Thursday and the next week it could be Thursday to Sunday.”
Gay adds that the Bunnings workers will resist any effort to impost insecure hours, and that more strikes are sure to follow.