A petition has been launched after a restaurant chain decided to scrap free staff meals. Fridays (previously known as TGI Fridays) has a restaurant at the Cornerhouse in Nottingham.
Staff who work 10 hours or more currently are entitled to a free meal during their shift but from the beginning of May that will be axed. The decision has come under fire but the company defended the move saying it wants to provide more "equitable benefits" for all employees.
The union Unite Hospitality launched the petition, calling on Fridays' CEO Julie McEwan to reconsider the "ill judged" move. It says: "Hard working staff at TGI Fridays are at the centre of the hospitality experience. Without them, TGI Fridays is nothing. In the midst of a cost of living crisis, low paid staff at TGI Fridays will be forced to give up more of their hard earned cash in order to fuel themselves through the day.
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"The TGI Fridays customer experience is based on happy and extrovert team members driving sales. It makes sense to keep these staff fed and motivated. Please, reinstate the staff meals."
The union added: "Staff are rightly angry and frustrated that they will have to sacrifice more of their income to feed themselves at work in order to satisfy the profit margins of company executives."
A spokesman for Fridays said: "We still offer all team members a range of industry leading benefits including 50 per off off our entire food menu and free soda during working hours, plus 50 per cent off for up to six people which they can use all year round as many times as they wish.
"However, we do recognise that these are challenging economic times and this will impact on our teams. As part of our ongoing efforts to ensure colleague wellbeing, we are exploring a partnership with Wagestream, the financial wellbeing app, to offer extra support to our employees."
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