With Covid 19 wreaking havoc on our way of life there are various companies doing their best to take advantage of the situation, such as petrol stations charging up to $0.40 cents a litre more than anyone else for for fuel. But this is to be expected as they have a history of of ripping the public off and the authorities doing nothing about it. Also grocery companies charging $14.00 for one cauliflower.

However what is not expected is Woolworths deciding to gouge the disabled and elderly that have carers that assist with their shopping. Woolworths had shopping online where you could order online and choose a pick up time and the carer could just drop in and pick the items up. Seems very simple, a person doesn’t have to spend time wandering around the store with whatever health condition they have, instead an employee who is there for their shift does the work of collecting the items for the order and then you or your carer can drop in spend a couple of minutes picking the order and no matter what their health condition is they are not likely to be spreading anything.

Instead Woolworths have decided to delve into the realms of racketeering by removing this service and providing only a paid delivery service. So still their staff putting the orders together but adding the additional staff of a delivery driver for which you have to pay an exorbitant fee for the delivery and have someone available for a two hour window to receive it.

This might be fine for the average person but for the disabled or elderly that has a paid carer service this is untenable as you can’t have a carer just hanging around for two hours whilst Woolworths are just padding their bottom line with the delivery fee they impose.

Woolworths need to reverse this decision immediately otherwise the effect on the the disabled and elderly will be felt for the entire period of the Woolworths Covid 19 racketeering period.

Woolworths were approached for a comment and advised that the safety of their workers comes first.
How can the safety of workers be more at risk by packing groceries for fulfilling groceries orders for pick up then fulfilling orders for delivery. Which then require another team member to deliver them?
This is clearly a case of Woolworths wanting to pad their bottom line buy forcing the disabled and elderly to pay more to have their groceries delivered.
Woolworths must address this immediately as to continue to gouge the disabled and elderly is totally unacceptable.

The Problem

Recently, on a FaceBook community group’s page – Plastic Free Wollongong I noticed a post from a member expressing their dismay that our local radio station, i98FM, was handing out Balloons.

This post inspired me to create this meme:

I first posted it to the Plastic Free Wollongong group FaceBook page and then on the i98FM FaceBook page.

The Response

On Thursday, 13 September 2018 at 8:57am i98FM responded.

It is rare to get a response and rarer still to get such a positive outcome.

The Acknowledgement

The Moral of the story

So the moral of the story is that we must always stand up for the environment against the actions of businesses, groups and especially the government.

Because sometimes they listen, sometimes they respond, sometimes they act.

NVDA (Non Violent Direct Action) can, will and does work.