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.

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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.