Coles has "insourced" trolley collection at half of its ACT stores, a year after it agreed to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to underpaid collectors interstate.
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A Coles spokesman said the company had brought trolley collectors in-house at four of its eight ACT stores and was working towards transitioning all others.
The Fair Work Ombudsman withdrew a Federal Court action in October after Coles agreed to pay 10 trolley collectors from Adelaide, employed by sub-contractors, nearly $221,000 they had been underpaid.
Coles entered into an enforceable undertaking where they also agreed to establish a $500,000 fund to back-pay any other trolley collectors at its supermarkets found to have been underpaid, acknowledging there had been a lack of transparency in its contracting arrangements.
"The model was vulnerable to the exploitation and underpayment of employees of trolley collection contractors and sub-contractors," the company said.
Coles had brought trolley collection services in more than 400 of its stores in-house by the time of the undertaking, and said it expected to have all of its collectors employed directly by the end of next September.
The company would not release details this week on how much, if anything, had been paid from the $500,000 fund, but a Coles spokesman said there had been no claims made from ACT collectors.
