UK’s second largest supermarket group, Sainsbury’s, has announced to cut up to 400 jobs and thousands of working hours in a restructuring of its store operations. As part of the shakeup, Sainsbury’s would be cutting night shifts in 140 stores as well. This would affect 4,000 employees, who will be required to move either to early morning or late evening shifts.
In UK, supermarkets are losing market share to convenience stores, discounters and online shopping. In response, they have cut their prices and invested in raising the quality of their products which pushes Sainsbury’s to tackle the declining sales by making their shops more efficient and cheaper to run.
The affected Sainsbury’s workers by this move, who have now entered a 45-day period of consultation, will be offered roles elsewhere in Sainsbury’s or redundancy.
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Sainsbury’s spokesperson said, “We regularly review our business to ensure we are operating as efficiently and effectively as possible. Following a recent review, we are making some changes to administrative roles and night shift patterns in a number of stores, subject to consultation. We appreciate this will be a difficult time for those colleagues affected by the changes and will support them in any way we can.”
Meanwhile, trade union Unite, which represents more than 12,000 members working for Sainsbury’s, said this was bad news and that it would seek guarantees over no compulsory redundancies.
