Retail workers in Australia have historically been low-paid. This is due in large part to a lack of industrial militancy. But a change is sweeping through the industry. Over the past two years, retail workers have taken industrial action at bookstores Better Read Than Dead and Readings, and even gone on strike nationally at Apple stores.

Now this new phase of union action is set to hit Australia’s supermarket duopoly. Coles and Woolworths together dominate roughly 70 percent of the market. On Saturday, October 7, workers at both chains will undertake the first ever national strike of Australian supermarket workers.

Coles’s and Woolworths’s profits for the last financial year were $1.1 and $1.6 billion, respectively. But its employees are some of the lowest paid people in the country, and must now spend over 81 percent of their income on rent if they want to live in a capital city in Australia. Supermarket workers were praised as “essential” during the pandemic, but in practice were often treated as punching bags.