Asda moving 4,000 staff to lower-paid roles as almost 300 jobs at risk

Asda has announced more than 4,000 night workers will have their pay reduced, while a major shake-up of store operations will put close to 300 roles at risk.

The supermarket chain has proposed that some overnight restocking shifts at 184 stores are moved to the daytime, putting 211 night shift manager roles at risk.

It said the changes will also affect 4,137 hourly-paid workers, who will see shift patterns move to the daytime and lose their night shift pay premium of at least £2.52 per hour.

Asda also revealed a 25% cut to the opening hours of 23 in-store Post Office shops. It will also shut seven in-store pharmacies, which employ 14 pharmacists and 48 other workers.

Ken Towle, Asda’s retail director, said: “The retail sector is evolving at pace and it is vital we review changing customer preferences, along with our own ways of working, to ensure we are operating as efficiently as possible so that we can continue to invest and grow our business.

“We are now entering a period of consultation with our colleagues on these proposals. We recognise this will be a difficult time for them and will do all we can to support them through this process.”

A string of job redundancies 

Asda is not the only company to announce job changes in recent weeks. Music streaming service Spotify has announced that it is laying off 6% of its global workforce, in a message to staff posted online by CEO Daniel Ek. He said that in order to "bring our costs more in line", Spotify has “made the difficult but necessary choice to cut our number of staff."

Google parent company Alphabet has said it will cut around 12,000 jobs after chief executive Sundar Pichai claimed that despite the company’s two years of extremely rapid growth, its employees had been “hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today”.

Microsoft said “macroeconomic conditions and changing customer priorities” were to blame for 10,000 jobs - almost 5% of its workforce - being axed and earlier this month, Amazon announced plans to shut three UK warehouses in a move that will impact 1,200 jobs. Sites in the west of Scotland, Hemel Hempstead, Doncaster and Gourock have been proposed to shut, with workers being offered roles at other existing Amazon locations.