Supermarkets are cutting costs as they try to protect profits while keeping prices down for customers. Top executives talk about “efficiencies”, but retail workers say that in practice that can mean chilly stores, cutbacks on cleaning and reductions in staff hours on spurious grounds.
The UK’s biggest supermarket, Tesco, for example, has handed out high-profile hourly pay increases for shop workers, but is cutting back the number of hours they can work, according to some staff. Meanwhile, the lowest-paid salaried staff such as team managers say they are having to do more while enduring a real-terms pay cut, with rises of just 3% falling well short of the current 11.1% inflation rate.
