Next Warns of Store Closures After Being Ordered by Court to Pay Store Staff the Same as Warehouse Workers
Next has said it could be forced to close stores after losing a landmark legal battle over equal pay and being forced to pay store staff the same as warehouse workers. The Telegraph has more.
The retail giant issued the warning after an employment tribunal ruled last month that Next should pay its store staff, who are predominantly women, the same hourly rates as its mostly male warehouse workers.
This will threaten Next’s ability to make stores “individually profitable”, bosses told investors on Thursday, as they pursue an appeal against the decision.
If unsuccessful, Next could have to pay more than £30m to settle the claim, which was first lodged in 2018 and includes more than 3,500 current and former shop workers.
Next laid out the potential impact of this in its half-year results on Thursday: “Inevitably some of our stores will no longer be viable if this ruling is upheld on appeal.
“Materially increasing store operating costs will result in more shops being closed when their leases expire, and will materially impede our ability to open new stores going forward.”
It also warned that the case could have ripple effects across its warehouses, where it will be unable to raise wages without doing so in stores.
The company said: “If, for many people, warehouse work is less attractive than work in stores (as the evidence before the Tribunal showed), how can a warehouse attract the number of employees it needs?”
Why on earth are courts trying to set wages? And after 14 years of ‘Conservative’ government as well.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
That’s worked out well for ALL staff hasn’t it, even backroom people. So jobs are going to be lost all for a few quid and a gripe that has no place in even the corrupt British Judicial system.
As I have posted before, it looks like everybody from cleaner to chairman will have to be paid the same. Hmm? Not sure this will work.
Not entirely Off-T.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/starmers-headlong-rush-to-make-us-all-poorer/
David Craig at TCW pondering Kneel’s hardly concealed implementation of the
Cloward-Piven Strategy as the means by which he destroys the country. The Conservatives got the ball rolling and then exited to allow Kneel to finish the job, target date 2030.
Virtually from arriving at DS I have been convinced that destruction of this country by the Davos Deviants was the aim – the reduce to rubble of the greatest nation on the planet.
The most equitable and inclusive closure programme under the DIE programme.
Next have closed 15% of stores in the last 7 years [Statista]. Although as a Group they appear to have recovered well after the huge impact of the plandemic, their treatment of stores as individual profit-centres could well see them retreat to substantially just online shopping?
‘Why on earth are courts trying to set wages? And after 14 years of ‘Conservative’ government as well.’
What do people expect from the fake Conservative Party – small c conservatism? They abandoned that 30 years ago.
Well done, so lots of people are going to lose their jobs instead of being paid a different wage to do a different job. Genius.
And who could have possibly seen that coming. Oh, that will be all of us who still use common sense and understand some basic economics.
My son has both retail and warehouse staff (albeit on a far smaller scale). The conditions of work for warehouse staff are considerably more arduous and physically demanding than in the stores (I have experienced both) and in my view the warehouse staff deserve their premium.
“By each according to his ability, for each according to his need.”
I vomit as I type it.
When did our judicial system become Socialist…?
And who is the arbiter of ‘his ability’ and ‘his need’ in a complex society, who sits in judgement to decide?
Socialism is a mental illness – and there’s a lot of it about going undiagnosed.
Those who took their complaint to tribunal have won a pyrrhic victory. Idiots.
Good! Declare bankruptcy, fire everybody then those who brought this nonsense action and unions can contemplate the folly of their ways.
There have been cases of exactly this kind being pursued all over the place in the last few years, notable Birmingham CIty Council and Asda. The corporation obviously does everything it can to delay the outcome because the costs are ruinous. And this behaviour brings problems of its own. They are interesting cases because they raise all sorts of questions
Now that it’s equal pay lets swap round warehouse and retail and see how they get on?
Of course, do pay warehouse staff, predominately more(mainly male) than shop staff(mainly female), despite it being mainly female who buy in Next, and its also the perfect excuse to close stores and put it all “online”, not bad to say “equality” was supposed to have come in when I was a teenager, oh and lets not forget profit before people.
It was only Conservative on the Label.
That Party hasn’t been conservative for a generation. Lying, betraying social democrats en route to becoming full blown commies.
Marxist judges making law, usurping the Bank of England as they, political parties and the civil service chose and impose a command economy response at every chance they get. We will soon be impoverished by this historically discredited nonsense.