Tesco has introduced what it says is as “a simpler and fairer approach to premium payments”. While Britain‘s biggest supermarket is increasing store worker‘s hourly pay rate by 3.1% to £7.62 an hour, the grocer is also taking away Sunday and Bank Holiday ‘double-time‘ rates, to be replaced with ‘time and a half‘.
The supermarket chain will pay established colleagues slightly more than the Government‘s new National Living Wage of £7.20 per hour and is softening the blow of the premium rate reduction by offering a lump sum transition payment worth 18 months of the difference in pay.
“We‘ve spent a lot of time working with Usdaw and colleague representatives to understand what‘s important to colleagues,” said Matt Davies, Tesco UK and ROI CEO.
“Together, we‘ve agreed one of the highest pay and benefits packages in retail for store colleagues, and introduced a simpler and fairer pay structure, including one approach to premium payments.
The current package for a Tesco store worker includes a pension, 10% store discount and 5% turnaround bonus, although this last benefit is pretty much redundant as Tesco continues to struggle with profits.
