Thursday, July 17, 2025

Is Your Supermarket a Coercive Controller?

What voice-picking, casualisation, and leave manipulation reveal about power and control in New Zealand's supermarket duopoly.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, warehouse and supermarket workers were hailed as essential heroes. They kept shelves stocked and supply chains moving while the rest of us stayed home. But in the years since, many of those workers have found themselves under increasing pressure—from surveillance systems, management double standards, and a broader system that treats human beings as cost units rather than people.

This isn’t just bad management. It’s something deeper: a pattern of coercive control.

1. Signs of Coercive Control in the Modern Supermarket Workplace

  • Surveillance disguised as support: Workers wear voice-picking headsets that track every movement and pace. Daily "performance percentages" become emotional barometers. The system trains workers to see themselves as efficient or deficient—not human.

  • Conditional freedom: Staff are pressured to take leave during slow periods (cutting into their earned annual leave), yet routinely denied leave requests when they genuinely need rest. Time off becomes something the employer controls, not the employee.

  • Gaslighting via team language: Management frames leave requests and compliance as "helping the team," while ignoring workers' own needs. Loyalty is demanded but never reciprocated.

  • Shifting responsibility: Workers are told to "keep their numbers up" or face consequences—even when delays come from understaffing, equipment issues, or unrealistic targets.

  • Isolation and disconnection: Headsets reduce opportunities for natural conversation, camaraderie, and mutual support. The system promotes silence and separation.

2. The Industry System: Retail Logistics and Hyper-Lean Efficiency

Warehousing and supermarket distribution are built on tight margins and high turnover. Big employers like Woolworths NZ implement systems that:

  • Prioritise just-in-time inventory, pushing pressure downstream

  • Treat casualisation as a cost-saving strategy, replacing stable, permanent roles

  • Use technology to maximise output at the expense of worker autonomy

Efficiency becomes the only metric that matters. Human limits are treated as inefficiencies to be eliminated.

3. The Cultural Layer: Profit, Dehumanisation, and Control

This isn’t just industry-specific. It reflects a wider economic culture:

  • Neoliberal logic tells us that if something can be made more efficient, it should be—regardless of human cost.

  • Short-term shareholder return is prioritised above worker wellbeing or sustainable practices.

  • Workers in "essential" jobs are celebrated in public but systematically disempowered in practice.

The language of values and care has been replaced with metrics, cost centres, and compliance.

This is what happens when a society values financial outcomes over real value—when human dignity, care, and wellbeing are sacrificed to maintain profitability. When workers are reduced to data points and cost burdens, any sense of shared humanity is lost.

4. The Duopoly Effect: Nowhere to Run

New Zealand’s supermarket industry is dominated by two giants: Foodstuffs and Woolworths NZ. Between them, they control over 90% of the grocery market.

In a competitive market, workers might be able to seek better conditions elsewhere. But in a duopoly:

  • Bad practices become normalised

  • There’s no meaningful alternative

  • Workers feel trapped, not supported

Even consumer activism has limited effect when both companies operate under similar models.

5. Shareholders vs Stakeholders: The Ethical Failure in Management

Much of this systemic harm stems from a narrow focus on shareholder interests. Corporate leaders often justify harmful practices in the name of profitability and shareholder value. But true leadership, as taught in modern management theory, calls for a stakeholder approach.

Stakeholder theory argues that ethical and sustainable businesses consider the interests of all who are affected by their decisions—not just investors, but also employees, customers, suppliers, and the community. In the supermarket supply chain, this would mean:

  • Prioritising job security over short-term cost-cutting

  • Providing meaningful leave and rest for workers

  • Recognising frontline staff as strategic partners, not expendable tools

  • Building long-term resilience and wellbeing across the whole system

Instead, what we often see is the opposite: a relentless focus on metrics, an erosion of worker dignity, and an abdication of ethical responsibility.

Conclusion: What Would We Call This Anywhere Else?

What your supermarket is doing isn't just inefficient—it’s dehumanising.
It’s not just profit-seeking—it’s control-seeking.

If a relationship outside of work used this kind of manipulation—withholding autonomy, tracking movement, gaslighting through guilt—we’d call it coercive control. We’d call it abusive.
When employers do it, we call it “efficiency.”

  • If you’re a worker: your discomfort is valid.

  • If you’re a customer: demand better from the duopoly.

  • If you’re in management: remember what a stakeholder really is.

The next time your supermarket talks about values—ask them if control is one of them.


This piece draws on lived experiences from warehouse and retail workers across Aotearoa New Zealand. If it resonates, share it. Start a conversation. Challenge the control.

Tuesday, May 21, 2024

It's been a while...

 So how have you all been?  


I know blogging is a lot less of a thing now and everyone's over on Youtube or TikTok, but I'd rather write than do video content, so here I am.  I want to start writing again, and this is where I can self publish my content.


I don't know what direction I'll take this yet.  Still looking at life and faith and mental health mostly, as those are what my journey has been and still is.  Maybe more book reviews too.


And art.



And probably cat pics.
This is Taco Cat.

So, this is an invitation to resume this journey with me.  Ready?





Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Fallen

The lies overwhelmed me and I fell into this darkness, without the strength to resist them.

Each time I thought I saw hope, and lifted my head, I got whacked back down like a mole in a whack-a-mole game.

Yet here I am. Still breathing. Starting to look for a way to resist the lies again.

How about you? How are you getting on? Perhaps we can lean on each other. You watch my back and I'll watch yours. Together, we might have a chance.

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Stubborn is Good

Especially when fighting against darkness.

Thursday, September 29, 2016

Who I am

Apologies for being missing in action these last few months. The current but of depression I've been battling against seems to have depleted my creative energy in all areas.

However, a new season is coming.  The sap of creativity is flowing again.

Here is the result of my reflection on who I am, and what I have received through Christ. (Including, but not limited to...)

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

With all my heart

The greatest commandment is this: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.
Deuteronomy 6:5 NIV

What does it really mean to love Him with all my heart?

For me, it means that when I come to him in prayer, praise and worship I bring Him the emotions that are in the depths of my being.  There is no part of me that is an unacceptable offering when I bring it to His altar.  I bring Him not only my joys, but also my tears, my anxieties, even my depression.  My whole heart, nothing held back.

I love psalms.  I love the way the full expression of all human emotions are expressed in prayer and song.

For so long I have battled against the lie of not being good enough.  Especially when I find myself yet again in this valley of darkness.  I don’t know how long I must walk through this, but I’m not afraid because I know I don’t walk through it alone.

More important, this darkness is not going to hold me back.  Having depression is not going to stop me from going deeper into scripture, deeper into prayer and deeper into worship.

Having depression doesn’t disqualify me from the gifts and abilities He’s granted me.  It doesn’t prevent me from bringing His blessing to others.  It doesn’t disqualify me from my dreams and hopes.



Friday, April 29, 2016

Brave Girl

I have written several draft posts over the last few weeks, but for each one, when I've read over it I've felt "I'm not ready to share this yet.  It's still too real and too raw."

I want to be authentic, real and honest with you.   I want to be able to share what's really going on in my life below the everyday stuff, to go deeper than the small-talk kind of posts.  But I'm also very aware this is a public forum.

So it has taken a few weeks to process enough to blog about this event from the beginning of the month.

I was an attendee at the first ever "Brave Girl" conference, hosted by the inspiring Steph and the team at bravegirl.co.nz.   

Photo courtesy of Manda J Photography and Brave Girl NZ
I was feeling down and vulnerable.  My black dog seemed to be getting worse, and it felt that I was going around in circles despite doing all that I should and could in terms of self care and well-being and processing through my "stuff".  I felt that my lack of progress was a reflection on my strength and my faith.

Photo courtesy of Manda J Photography and Brave Girl NZ
Even during the conference I was fighting against the darkness. I'd woken up on the Saturday morning feeling down, and instead of dissipating the feeling kept welling back up.

Photo courtesy of Manda J Photography and Brave Girl NZ
I didn't quite know what to expect, but found the weekend like a soothing balm.  The messages and stories of courage and hope, were what I most needed to hear.  

Photo courtesy of Manda J Photography and Brave Girl NZ

To understand that He is with us in and through the storm.  To learn about the different types of depression, and the amazing relief to finally understand that being prescribed medication does not represent failure.  (I mean, I knew that before, but it seems I didn't fully believe it applied to myself).  To have some much needed time of support and prayer.

Photo courtesy of Manda J Photography and Brave Girl NZ
Thank you Steph and your team.  Thank you for being brave enough to take the risk that hosting this conference would have been for you.  Thank you for your effort, your honesty and your compassion.  I'll look forward to seeing you again next year.

This is NOT a sponsored post in any way, just my own personal review of this event.