In a bid to attract staff and to meet Australian labour union requests, major retail outlets such as Bunnings, Big W, IKEA, and Apple are improving staff benefits to include five weeks of leave per year, which coincides with the labour union calling for a reduction of the work week from 38 to 35 hours and ten days personal leave.
The requests are being made in answer to rising productivity and automation, to retain long-term workers but also to ensure Australia measures up with other countries’ benefits, such as France, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, which are among countries that offer a minimum of 25 days annual leave.
The National Secretary-Treasurer of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees’ Association (SDA) Gerard Dwyer said that Bunnings, Big W, IKEA, and Apple were “setting themselves up as employers of choice” and suggests other major companies to follow suit to remain competitive.
According to IKEA, the furniture maker is offering new staff benefits to boost opinion of retail jobs, hoping they will now be seen as a potential career option.
In answer to the union’s recommendations, IKEA has approved the expansion of more than 4000 workers’ to be offered paid leave from 20-25 days a year as part of a retail union contract that also prohibits casual hires and allows full-timers the option to work their hours within a four-day week.
Retailers are making adjustments now because they also want to keep and attract long-term workers and change the opinion of retail jobs as temporary.
For IKEA, the coworker experience manager Greg Day asserted the major furniture company intends to distinguish itself from rivals and even other industries.
“The main motivation for us is to be able to have coworkers join and stay with IKEA and see IKEA as a valid option as a career,” he said.
“We know that that’s been a struggle for retailers in general because often there is a bit of a perception that it’s a transient kind of employment opportunity.”
In another first, employees will have fixed schedules instead of adjusting frequently to ensure certainty of days and hours over a four-week cycle and to guarantee workers can have a more structured schedule.
According to IKEA Australia people and culture manager Elin Ahlund, he said that “while retail is synonymous with a casualised workforce, at IKEA our focus is on creating predictability, flexibility and security for our coworkers”.
Recently, 89% of Big W employees agreed with a new union agreement that gives them “boosted leave”. The agreement also allowed 15,000 staff to select either higher pay or an extra week’s leave.
“For the first time, Big W team will be able to purchase additional leave, which will be available from July 1, 2025 beginning with the option for full time team to purchase two days and then up to five days from July 1, 2027,” a Big W spokesman said.
Now that other major retailers have made the change, the SDA suggests that other retailers seriously consider changing their policies and offering workers more leave and benefits.
“The retail sector has been the subject of extraordinary automation and productivity gains over the last decade, and it’s time the workers got something back,” Dwyer said.
