Morrisons has become the latest UK supermarket giant to announce a major round of job cuts in the wake of the government’s Budget in October. The Bradford-headquartered chain has confirmed plans to axe more than 200 roles from its retail people team.
The move forms part of a wider drive to significantly cut costs and comes after chief executive Rami Baitiéh described the “avalanche of costs” businesses will face after the government’s Budget in October. The roles set to be cut by Morrisons include positions in customer experience, employee engagement, recruitment, and payroll.
A Morrisons spokesperson said: “We have recently carried out a review of our people structure to ensure we are offering our stores and sites a timely and consistent service. We are therefore proposing to remove the roles of regional people manager, store people manager and case specialist from our structure, meaning colleagues in these roles are being placed at risk of redundancy.
“The new structure will consist of a number of new central roles to support our supermarkets directly along with central HR support and additional employee relations roles. Before any final decisions are taken, we will undertake a minimum 45 day consultation process.”
The news comes after Sainsbury’s has confirmed plans to axe more than 3,000 roles as it prepares to close all its remaining in-store cafes. The major overhaul will cut two per cent of its current workforce, which stands at 148,000.
More than 70 businesses, including Tesco,Asdaand Sainsbury’s, told Rachel Reeves in an open letter that the changes announced in the Budget mean price hikes and job cuts are a “certainty”.
Ms Reeves revealed a £25.7 billion change to employers’ national insurance contributions (NICs) in the budget, which would increase the rate of the tax and the threshold at which firms must pay.
The letter, arranged by the British Retail Consortium, was also signed by household names including Amazon, Aldi, Boots, B&Q, Currys, Greggs, JD Sports, Marks & Spencer, Next and Primark.
The letter reads: “We appreciate Government’s focus on improving the fiscal situation and investing in public services; we also recognise the role businesses have in supporting this. But the sheer scale of new costs and the speed with which they occur create a cumulative burden that will make job losses inevitable, and higher prices a certainty.”
The Office for Budget Responsibility believes the equivalent of about 50,000 jobs could be lost as a result of the hike in NICs.
Asked if job losses were a price that had to be paid to restore stability to the public finances, a No 10 spokeswoman said: “We’ve certainly had to take difficult decisions and been very upfront about the decisions that we’ve had to take to restore the public finances.
“But we’re also clear that without doing so, you don’t have the the basis for stable economic growth, and that is the condition that we know businesses need to thrive in the long term.”