Woolworths has removed in-store butchers from all its South Island supermarkets.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur in-store butchery teams have served our customers with incredible skill and dedication for many years, and we thank them for their contribution.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe remain committed to supporting South Island farmers and delivering great value and quality for our customers every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
The company\u2019s response did not specify how many workers were affected, whether they had been redeployed or made redundant, or where the South Island\u2019s meat would be processed.<\/p>\n
The move follows a trial reported in April, when Woolworths was considering replacing its remaining South Island butcheries with pre-packaged meat.<\/p>\n
At the time, Workers First Union\u2019s Rudd Hughes challenged the company\u2019s explanation for its recruitment difficulties, telling Newstalk ZB that butchers were leaving because they could \u201csee the writing on the wall\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said workers feared the trial would lead to restructuring and were getting out ahead of it.<\/p>\n
Centralised processing is already established in Woolworths\u2019 North Island business. <\/p>\n
The change comes amid political pressure over supermarket competition.<\/p>\n
National has pledged, if re-elected, to pursue splitting Foodstuffs into two competing nationwide grocery chains, subject to a Commerce Commission assessment finding the change would benefit shoppers.<\/p>\n
The proposal would separate Pak\u2019nSave from New World and Four Square, creating three major competing groups alongside Woolworths.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Woolworths has removed in-store butchers from all its South Island supermarkets. \u201cOur in-store butchery teams have served our…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5263,4192,311651,35196,71,16747,2514,302,3822,111,139,69,97266,70675,12064,4227,5196,31530,2687,5258,1240,213,7227,92],"class_list":["post-635721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-all","tag-butchers","tag-centralised","tag-difficulties","tag-from","tag-instore","tag-island","tag-its","tag-meat","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-persistent","tag-processing","tag-prompted","tag-recruitment","tag-removed","tag-removes","tag-saying","tag-shift","tag-south","tag-sports","tag-supermarkets","tag-woolworths"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}