Barry Mason
Workers are rallying in Leeds today to oppose the imposition of a new work contract that will negatively impact 60,000 employees of the UK supermarket giant Asda, a subsidiary of US-based global retailer Walmart.
The merging of five current contracts into one “flexible” contract, known as Contract 6, will mean workers losing paid breaks. Working bank holidays and weekends would be compulsory and they would have to agree to work more flexible hours. This would cut across the needs of many working parents to have guaranteed work hours for them to be able to perform care duties for their children or, in other cases, adult relatives. The changes would come in return for a tiny rise in basic pay from £8.84 an hour to £9 an hour.
Asda employs over 100,000 workers, including 12,000 workers just in its delivery warehouses—servicing both stores and the growing home delivery sector.
In a consultative ballot of GMB trade union members, 93 percent rejected the terms of the contract. In response the GMB has organised today’s rally, to be followed by a march passing Asda’s nearby headquarters. The GMB is the only union recognised by Asda.
Transferring to the new contract was previously voluntary but is now compulsory. The Daily Mirror on August 5 quoted from a question and answer leaflet to be given to Asda workers not wanting to move onto the new contract. It states, “You will have a number of 121s [one-to-one meetings] with your manager. As part of the 121 process, we hope you agree to move to the new contract. If you still don’t want to sign up to the contract after those 121s, at that stage we would issue notice to terminate your employment on your existing terms and conditions.”
To make clear the threat, the leaflet states, “We will offer to re-engage you on the new terms. If you choose not to accept the new terms you would leave the business.”
Asda was bought by Walmart in 1999 for £6.7 billion and, along with Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons, is one of the big four supermarkets dominating the UK market. However, this leading position is being challenged by discounter supermarkets, Aldi and Lidl. In response, attacks on workers’ conditions are being ramped up across the big four. Along with rents, labour costs are a major factor in supermarkets’ overall costs.
In May last year, in return for raising basic pay to just £9.20, Sainsbury’s imposed a new contract, with a threat to sack any worker who did not sign up, including a loss of paid breaks, premium Sunday pay and bonuses. According to the Unite union, around 9,000 workers would lose up to £400 a year, with some losing thousands. An online article in the Grocer explained that among the “contractual changes being introduced are the removal of… paid overtime, alterations to productivity, flexibility and attendance standards, and streamlined and broader roles. These include moving from 22 specific roles to just five.”
In June and July, hundreds of workers at one of Sainsbury’s 23 distribution depots—Waltham Point in London—held two 24 hour strikes in opposition to changes in the firm’s attendance policy and plans to reduce sickness pay from 26 weeks to just two weeks.
A pay rise awarded to Tesco staff in June 2017 was tied to proposals to reduce the rate of pay for Sundays and bank holidays from time and a half to time and a quarter from July 2018. This year’s basic pay rise for Tesco store and warehouse workers was set at £9 and was offset by abolition of an annual cash bonus.
Although most Asda supermarket staff are low paid, senior executives are raking it in. The Walton family, which owns Walmart, has a combined net worth of $191 billion—an increase of $39 billion since last year—with their astronomical wealth rocketing up by $4 million every hour. In the same amount of time, one of their shop floor employees in the UK earns just £9 and one of their American employees $11. Tesco’s chief executive, Dave Lewis, was given a £1.6 million annual bonus this year, bringing his total annual earnings to £4.6 million.
No comments:
Post a Comment