Why the latest Warehouse job sacrifices are the perfect analogy for late stage NZ neoliberal capitalism
The Warehouse employees are feeling disrespected after the company used the Government’s wage subsidy scheme but is now axing work for hundreds of people.
This is surely the moment when NZ says, ‘Ok, no more. No. You are breaking the ‘everyone gets a bargain’ deal we cut with you in 1982.
The deal went like this.
We would accept the Warehouse gutting all the local stores and destroy community retailing by allowing the fucking Tindall family to import giga tones of cheap shit from overseas IF and only IF they employed huge numbers of people who wouldn’t normally be able to get a job anywhere else.
They were granted their opportunity to destroy local retailing on the understanding they hired people with minimum skill sets.
That was the unspoken deal as NZ went into the throws of the neoliberal deregulation free market revolution.
Fast forward to 2020 and the Warehouse’s vast free market supply chain is not only part of the vector for the Covid virus, it’s part of the problem of unsustainable naked consumerism.
With the Warehouse dumping jobs, no one is getting a bargain.
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Fuck the warewhare put my favourite shop toy world when I was a kid out of business 6 months after they set up there bargain barn in my hometown in the 90s.
The Warehouse grew in popularity because they were cheap . NZ people were tired of paying over the odds for goods that were
so much cheaper in Australia . The fact they caused a few small businesses to close was of little concern to most . It was the same years before when the supermarkets caused the close of many small butchers and green grocers . Now the format that the Warehouse operates has changed due to switch in the way people buy. There is an adage in business adapt or die and this has been the case with many NZ icons . A total collapse of a business hurts a lot more people than those effect by this shift in the staff numbers now. The only obligation the Warehouse has to staff is to be as open and honest as they can and to try and assist in their transition to other work.
There are plenty of people looking for staff so those let go need to be bold and try something new
Two things made me stop shopping at the warehouse, the first is the green washing. The second is the ripping off of NZ manufacturers.