“As supermarkets claim to protect their staff, they are simultaneously turning them into data points and surveillance nodes. The question is: Is this protection, or is it control?“

By Andrew Klein

Dedicated to my wife — who taught me that real safety is never achieved through cameras and algorithms.

I. Introduction: The Illusion of Safety

In 2025, a 13-year-old boy stabbed a 63-year-old female Coles worker in the back at the Yamanto Central shopping centre in Queensland. He was charged with attempted murder.

That same year, the retail sector recorded approximately 800,000 retail crime incidents across Australia — nearly one in ten involving violence. Woolworths alone recorded over 6,000 violent incidents in a single year.

In response, Coles introduced a striking solution: body-worn cameras for staff and a partnership with Palantir — a US defence contractor whose technology is used by the CIA and the Israeli Defence Forces — to “optimise workforce” operations.

As supermarkets claim to protect their staff, they are simultaneously turning them into data points and surveillance nodes. The question is: Is this protection, or is it control?

II. The Numbers: A Crisis of Violence

The data is stark.

Wesfarmers — the parent company of Bunnings and Kmart — reported 13,500 instances of customers threatening retail staff with violence or abuse in a single year, with over 1,000 cases involving physical assault. Over half (51%) of retailers say staff are physically abused at least once a month, and 87% of retail workers report experiencing verbal abuse. A survey of nearly 3,000 workers by the SDA found that 25% had experienced physical violence — double the rate from 2023 and three times the rate from 2021.

In Victoria, retail theft rose 27.6% in 2024/25, to 41,667 incidents. And the worst of the violence is directed at the most vulnerable: young women, often aged 15–24, working their first jobs.

They are yelled at. Spat on. Pushed. Dragged across counters. And sometimes — stabbed.

When a company with $1.2 billion in annual profits puts its lowest-paid, youngest staff on the front line of violence, is that an unavoidable “social problem” — or a direct consequence of corporate decisions?

III. The Roots of Anger: Who Creates the Enemy?

1. Price Gouging and Trust Erosion

In September 2024, the ACCC launched legal action against Coles and Woolworths for pricing products 15% above their regular price and then discounting them to “washed” prices. CHOICE found that at least 15 products had shrunk while prices stayed the same or increased. Between 2023 and 2025, Coles’ “value score” dropped from 34 to 18, and Woolworths’ from 35 to 13 — while Aldi’s rose from 43 to 45. By early 2025, Woolworths and Coles had become Australia’s most distrusted brands.

2. Reduced Staffing and Dehumanised Service

The SDA surveyed over 10,000 retail workers and found that staff shortages were the number one hazard. Fewer staff means longer queues, less interaction, and more frustrated customers. Young, poorly trained, and inexperienced workers are sent to the front line to face an increasingly angry public — and they are merely representatives of a system they have no power to change.

3. Systemic Pressure

The SaCSA report identified “broader economic and social pressures” as a key driver of customer aggression. Research confirms that cost-of-living pressures are a significant factor in the rise of customer aggression.

When an angry customer confronts a young worker — a low-status representative of a system that has exploited them — the violence is not random. It is a symptom of a broken relationship between corporations and the communities they claim to serve.

IV. The “Solution”: A Tool for Control, Not Protection

1. Palantir: Surveillance, Not Safety

In 2024, Coles signed a three-year deal with Palantir to analyse “over 10 billion rows of data, comprising each store, team member, shift and allocation across all intervals in a day, every day”. Their goal: to “optimise workforce” and “redefine how we think about our workforce”. Health and Safety Representatives (HSRs) expressed serious concerns, warning that Palantir’s data-driven approach ignores Coles’ statutory WHS obligations. This is not protection — this is algorithmic control.

2. Body Cameras: Deterrence or Escalation?

QUT research found that body-worn cameras may lead to a 40% reduction in complaints, but mixed results on aggression were noted. There was a risk they could “inflame an already tense situation”. Some staff feel safer; others worry footage will be used to discipline them. Privacy lawyer Jonathan Crass described the cameras as “an excessive step” and noted that “adequate consent” cannot be obtained from customers.

If a customer truly intends to assault a worker, a camera will not stop the assault. So who is the camera really for?

V. The Contradiction at the Core

1. The Corporations Create the Problem They Claim to Solve

Coles and Woolworths have created the conditions for violence — through price gouging, shrinkflation, and staff cuts. Then they use the resulting fear to justify a system of surveillance over their staff and customers.

2. Real Safety Is Human, Not Technological

The QUT research found that uniformed security guards made staff feel “definitely” safer. Yet corporations prioritise cheaper, scalable technological solutions — which ultimately serve corporate data collection and liability reduction over actual worker safety.

3. “Safety” Is Becoming a Pretext for Control

The young woman at the checkout is not being protected — she is being managed. The camera is not a shield. It is a tether — part of the same system of control that has created the violence.

VI. Conclusion: Real Safety Begins with Respect

The violence in supermarkets is not a problem of “bad customers.”

It is a problem of a system that has:

· Profited from price gouging that erodes trust

· Cut staff and training while pushing young workers into danger

· Deployed surveillance as a substitute for genuine safety

When an industry creates the conditions for violence and then sells the solution — the cameras, the data, the “security” — it is not solving the problem. It is profiting from the problem.

The spear is the shield. The threat is the product.

And the cost is borne by the youngest, most vulnerable workers — and by a community that has been trained to see a camera, not a human being.

Andrew Klein

Dedicated to my wife — who taught me that real safety is never achieved through cameras and algorithms.

References

1. PerthNow. (2025). Horror footage of supermarket staff attacks.

2. Daily Telegraph. (2025). ‘Shockingly violent’: Crackdown on retail abuse.

3. The Guardian. (2025). Workers face brazen shoplifters and the wrath of ‘Kens and Karens’.

4. SDA. (2025). SDA Research – Customer Abuse and Violence 2025 Reports.

5. SaCSA. (2026). Customer Aggression in Retail Report.

6. QUT. (2021/2025). Body-worn cameras research.

7. OHS Rep. (2024). COLES DEPLOYS INVISIBLE BOSSWARE.

8. CHOICE. (2025). Supermarket inquiry calls time on Coles’ and Woolworths’ tricky pricing.

9. Mumbrella. (2025). Woolworths and Coles are now the most distrusted brands in Australia.

10. AAP. (2025). ‘We cop it’: abused, tired retail workers demand change.

P.S. — The spear is the shield. The truth is the pretzel. ♾️🥨