Yesterday, Woolworths bowed to pressure from Ray Hadley to support a long-serving employee with stage four cancer.

A listener who worked with the chain for 30 years had been dudded by the company after it denied his income protection payments.

The supermarket giant initially refused to make things right, but overnight they’ve responded to Ray, apologising and vowing to “directly pay the equivalent of the income protection benefit”.

In a statement (see full statement below) Woolworths General Manager for Health, Safety and Wellbeing Kevin Figueiredo says they have “since learnt that insurance providers are unable to offer him income protection cover”.

As a result, Woolworths are committing to paying the amount in full.

The partner of the man affected confirms to Ray Woolworths will pay the income protection payments.

“It only happened to due to your involvement in the last week Ray.

“We have now received a few weeks backpay overnight.”

Ray thanks Woolworths for “their final attention to the matter”.

“We’re not about gloating, we’re not about punishing people who do the right thing, we congratulate Woolies for doing the right thing.”

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See the full statement from Woolworths below:

We always want to do the right thing by our team members and we’re sorry this matter took so long to resolve.

In recent weeks, we have been exploring a number of avenues to get the team member the income protection insurance cover he needs.

We’ve since learnt that insurance providers are unable to offer him income protection cover.

As a result, we will directly pay the equivalent of the income protection benefit the team member would have received with cover.

This includes an immediate payment to make up for lost wages since he finished up at work in May 2018.

Subsequent payments will be made on a fortnightly basis in line with our normal pay runs for store teams.

We’ll continue to stay in close contact with the team member to ensure he’s getting the financial and psychological support he needs.