Asda consults on cutting pay for 7,000 workers

Supermarket concatenation Asda is considering whether to chopped the wage of 7,000 unit successful the southbound eastbound of England to bring it successful enactment with its different stores.

Staff astatine 39 stores extracurricular the M25 person been paid much for decades to offset a higher outgo of surviving person to London.

A spokesperson said each Asda unit had precocious been fixed a 10% wage emergence to assistance with soaring inflation.

The GMB national said Asda was acceptable to occurrence workers who refused to hold to the caller conditions.

The national said the workers were already low-paid, and that readying to trim wage during a cost-of-living situation was "inexcusable".

The workers get a alleged "location supplement" of 60p per hour, which Asda whitethorn scrap, and a nighttime supplement that it wants to reduce, the GMB said.

It added that those who bash not hold to the wage simplification "could beryllium dismissed if they garbage to sign" the caller contract.

The consultation is happening astatine the moment, and Asda plans to bring successful the changes successful November, the national said.

It accused Asda-owners the Issa brothers of laying the crushed for a "debt laden merger" betwixt Asda and EG Group's UK petrol stations - which the brothers besides own.

"These slash and pain tactics, on with nutrient and substance terms increases, volition lone ramp up if the merger goes ahead," said GMB organiser Nadine Houghton.

However, an Asda spokesperson said the corporate consultation was "in a tiny fig of stores" wherever workers were paid 60p per hr connected apical of the £11.00 per hr nationalist rate.

"This supplement is retired of enactment with the wider retail marketplace and has created an anomaly wherever immoderate Asda colleagues successful stores that are adjacent unneurotic are paid antithetic rates," the spokesperson said.

Asda is discussing a "compensatory payment" successful instrumentality for removing the supplement.

"These discussions are ongoing and nary last determination has been taken," the spokesperson added.

Asda has astir 140,000 employees successful total.