Woolworths New Zealand Wants to Move Its Customer Care Jobs to Australia: A Simple Guide for Job Seekers
News · 2026-09-02 · 4 min read
News about companies cutting costs usually talks about profit and loss. This story is more interesting for people who follow jobs abroad. Here, an employer is not only cutting roles. It plans to move the work to a different country. A redundancy in New Zealand could become a hiring opportunity in Australia.
This is what is happening at Woolworths New Zealand. The supermarket company has started consultation on a plan to close its Customer Care Centre and move about 130 jobs across the Tasman to Australia. Staff heard about the plan on September 1. They have only until September 15 to give feedback before the proposal is finalised.
The Plan Is Not Final Yet
Consultation is still open until September 15. Woolworths may change how big the closure is after hearing feedback. But the union has raised another concern: service quality. If customer support is centralised in Australia, customers in New Zealand may speak to agents without the regional and local knowledge that the current remote staff in NZ bring to the job.
How the Money Looks
Workers First Union represents the staff who are affected. It says the move is projected to give Woolworths around NZ$4.1 million in extra earnings by FY2029. That is a small amount for a company of this size. For the year to June 2026, it reported NZ$163 million in earnings before interest and tax. This was 8.8% higher than the year before. The company has also spent more than NZ$400 million on rebranding its stores.
A Common Business Move, But Across a Border
Many companies bring support teams together in one place. Call centres and back-office teams are often combined. So the idea itself is not new. What is different here is where the jobs are going. They are not moving to another New Zealand city. They are moving to Australia. The company built its customers and its profits inside New Zealand. Moving the people who serve those customers to another country changes things for everyone, and most of all for the workers.
Who Will Feel It Most
Headlines about "consolidation" often hide the real people behind the numbers. The union says that many people in the Customer Care team are sole parents who work remotely. If their role ends, they have fewer choices for similar work close to home. Many people take remote customer-service jobs because the hours fit around caring for children or family. Losing that kind of job means more than searching for a new one. A whole household may need to change its daily routine.
Press releases rarely talk about this. Not everyone can handle a sudden job loss in the same way. Moving a central team is efficient for a company. But for a worker who must do school pickups and also follow a fixed shift roster, "redeployment" is not always possible.
A Weak Local Job Market
The timing also matters. New Zealand has a 5.6% unemployment rate. People who lose these jobs will not find a tight labour market that is eager to hire them back quickly.
When the Job Travels Instead of the Worker
For decades, skilled and semi-skilled workers from New Zealand have moved to Australia for better pay and more opportunity. Usually, that was a personal decision. This case is different. The job itself is moving, whether or not any worker decides to go. This is an important point for anyone interested in migration. Offshoring is not just a way to save money. It can also be a quiet kind of labour migration that the employer drives. The opportunity moves to another country. The worker must then choose to follow it, learn new skills, or leave the workforce.
What Indonesian Job Seekers Can Learn
If you are looking at jobs in Australia for Indonesians, or at work in New Zealand, this story shows that job markets in both countries are connected. Some workers will stay in New Zealand's changing job market. Others may look at opportunities in Australia. Either way, labour mobility now goes both ways: companies move roles, and people move because of those changes. Keep your English-language CV up to date, follow news from both countries, and be ready to act when the right opening appears.
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