A West Australian Coles supermarket manager has been slammed by the retail workers union after asking staff to work for four hours on a Sunday night without pay, but plenty of pizza.
The manager of the store posted a note in the shop, asking his 65-people workforce "to give me 4h free labour" to clear a backlog of stock in a storeroom.
"Yes, it is a big ask and I would not be requesting this unless it was absolutely necessary."
The reason, so the note said, was an "enormous amount of stock out in the back".
The note further read that he asked workers to "kick off the evening at 5:30pm and work through to 9:30pm. Pizza will be plentiful at 9:30pm.
"...I hope that you can give of your time to help the store get on top of this once and for all."
Peter O'Keefe from the Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers Association told the ABC's Geoff Hutchinson the union immediately got in contact with the manager to take down the message.
"This is clearly very concerning," he said.
"Coles - at the senior level - were aghast that he actually took this step."
Mr O'Keefe said the manager told the union this was acceptable practice.
Coles released a statement saying "we value all the hard work of our team members".
"The notice in the store in completely out of step with Coles' way of working."
A Coles insider told ABC Radio it was "good to see the appalling conditions at Coles finally being seen from the outside".
"Unpaid work is rife, hours and wages keep getting cut and more work is expected to be done with less.
"Everyone is overworked. This store manager would have been under extreme pressure from a regional manager and state operations manager to get the job done without spending any more money."
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