- The Guardian
- Issue #2119
It’s official, but not surprising: our two biggest supermarkets Coles and Woolworths have been deceiving customers through fake ‘sales.’ It’s a pretty simple trick; you lift prices for a few months, then lower them to a bit over where they started, and hey presto, you get to call it a sale and put up big red ‘sale’ signs, while making a fat profit. An associated benefit is that it makes the competition (IGA and Aldi) look more expensive, because they don’t have the big red ‘sale’ signs.
Unions described this about a year ago, along with other pricing tricks, as part of an anti-gouging campaign, but now it’s been confirmed by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). The ACCC has monitored this practice with extreme precision. They’ve done a report. Prime Minister Albanese has said he might do something about it by changing the Grocery Code of Conduct. Some fines are expected, probably nothing ‘Colesworth’ can’t afford.
Of course, that’s not all the duopoly has been up to. There’s also collusion in the form of prices which alternate, almost as though they’re colluding instead of competing. First Coke is cheaper at Coles, then it’s cheaper at Woolies, then back to Coles again, always by very small margins.
To quote The Australia Institute, “rather than setting prices due to demand, or to compete against each other, it appears Coles and Woolworths often take turns offering specials.” It’s collusion.
None of this comes as a shock to communists. Marx and Lenin described very clearly how capitalist competition leads to monopoly. The ACCC might have ‘competition’ in its name, but we know that ‘competition’ is not a magic spell. It’s a temporary state of affairs on the way to monopoly. That’s why there are so many different brands owned by the same conglomerate. The anti-competitive behaviour of ‘Colesworth’ isn’t a bug of the capitalist system, it’s a feature.
Still Coles and Woolies have been caught out with their rigged ‘sales,’ so all good, right?
Wrong. Corporate wrongdoing isn’t punished much in this country, if at all. That’s why the CFMEU gets placed into receivership over untested allegations, while proven incidents of crime by the big banks just get fines that they can easily afford. No administration, nobody loses their job.
More importantly, regardless of how much or how little punishment this latest scandal causes, no amount of pro-competition behaviour by the government and the ACCC will change the facts of life in Australia. The conditions that lead to the duopoly and its fake sales and apparent collusion are still there. Big corporations will always be organised for the interests of capital – making big returns. Competition, customers and the ACCC are just temporary obstacles.
What we need is socialism, and a system where working people are the owners, not just suckers, a system in which the big corporation are owned and run by the people. That’s what would really fix ‘Colesworth’, but we’re not going to get it just by wishing for it. Get into your union, support the Party and let’s work towards a real bargain.
