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.