Big retailers lead private employer list

RETAIL giants Wesfarmers and Woolworths continue to employ more people in Western Australia than any other private sector employers, with the introduction of Sunday trading boosting part-time and casual employee numbers.

Research undertaken for the WA Business News Book of Lists reveals Wesfarmers remains WA’s biggest employer, with more than 24,300 staff across its various businesses, including its flagship Coles, Kmart and Bunnings stores.

Wesfarmers chief executive Richard Goyder told guests at a WA Business News Success & Leadership breakfast last week that Coles had 4 million more customers per week than it did at the time of Wesfarmers’ acquisition of the supermarket chain.

With just more than 16,000 WA employees, Woolworths is a distant second.

The retailer announced plans to hire up to 700 new part-time staff across its Perth stores upon the introduction of Sunday trading in late August, in anticipation of 52 of its supermarkets trading on a Sunday for the first time.

Woolworths regional manager for Western Australia, Brad Bolin, said the introduction of Sunday trading was “a win-win situation for our existing and new people alike”.

The WA figures reflect a national trend, with Wesfarmers and Woolworths respectively the largest and second-largest private employers in Australia.

Commerce Minister Simon O’Brien said an estimated 1,000 casual jobs had been created as a result of the introduction of Sunday trading.

“Hour for hour, Sunday has become the busiest shopping day of the week,” he said. “Sunday trading has only been in operation for three months but, on average, 20,000 shoppers are visiting each of the major centres on a Sunday.”

The increase in customer visits in Perth has been stronger than in Brisbane and Adelaide when Sunday trading was introduced in those cities, according to the Shopping Centre Council of Australia.

Retail leaders will be hoping that the strength of Sunday trading encourages renewed confidence among WA shoppers.

Big miners BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto are third and fourth, respectively, employing almost 24,000 people in WA between them, although both companies flagged job cuts in recent months.

BHP moved about 3,000 of its staff into the new Brookfield Place office tower in June, while Rio received state government approval this month for a $1.8 billion expansion of its Yandicoogina iron ore project in the Pilbara region; an agreement that will extend the mine life by eight years.

Competitive Foods, the owner of fast-food chains Hungry Jacks, KFC and Domino’s, rounds out the top five with more than 9,600 workers in total, while sixth-placed McDonald’s doubled its WA staff numbers from last year to 8,000.

The revamped and rebranded Crown Perth entertainment complex at Burswood added 1,600 jobs during the past year and is set to add more in the future with plans for a six-star, 500-room hotel to open in 2016.

Construction firms Leighton Holdings and Monadelphous Group sit eighth and ninth, respectively, employing more than 9,000 people in the state between them.

Monadelphous is one of three WA-based companies in the top 10, alongside Wesfarmers, and Competitive Foods.

Alcoa rounds out the top 10, with more than 4.000 workers at its WA alumina refineries. Among the companies to have recorded a substantial fall in its number of employees was LenBuckeridge’s building group BGC. The firm currently employs 3,400 staff, down from 4,000 in 2011.

In the government sector, the Department of Education employs just short of 34,000 full-time equivalent staff across public schools in WA.

More than 33,000 people are employed by the Department of Health, including more than 21.000 public hospital workers.

The University of Western Australia leads the way in the tertiary education sector with more than 3,500 employees, followed closely by Curtin (3,400), while Edith Cowan and Murdoch employ 3,100 staff members between them.