The John Lewis Partnership, the parent company of Waitrose, has warned staff that they could receive smaller pay rises to give the business more financial flexibility amid its turnaround.
The partnership is understood to be consulting on changes to its constitution, with proposals including to “reset” salary policies and give more power to management in controlling performance-linked pay rises, The Telegraph reported.
The business said that its approach needs to be “more sustainable,” adding that “contribution-related pay will likely be smaller than in the past.”
In a recent presentation, staff were told that the proposed changes to pay rises comes as the partnership is “resetting expectations,” with rises reserved for staff who “consistently make an exceptional contribution to the business”.
Pay is currently one of the partnership’s biggest costs, having spent £1.8bn on staff across its department stores, supermarkets and head offices in its last full year revenues of £10.5bn.
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Under current rules, staff can earn a bigger salary rise if they fulfill performance-based targets, on top of the set baseline increase each year.
However, under new proposals, a caveat could be placed into the constitution which would allow perfomance-linked pay rises to be offered “unless there are exceptional circumstances where this should not apply”.
The constitution could also be amended so that the pay policy is adopted “unless there is a reasonable need not to, such as conserving resources”.
Earlier this month, staff were told: “Our aim is to reward exceptional contribution each year, but there may occasionally be years where we’re not able to – because it depends on how the partnership is performing, critical investment we need to make and a variety of external factors.”
Workers sitting on the John Lewis staff council are set to discuss the changes over coming weeks, with a vote taking place in March.
A John Lewis spokesperson told The Telegraph: “As an employee-owned organisation, we put our partners first and remain committed to rewarding their hard work.
“We are simply being transparent with partners – creating a level playing field and setting clear expectations around what they need to do to achieve additional performance related pay.”
The Partnership bonus, which is awarded to all staff, is separate to performance-related pay rises and the proposals will not affect this.
8 Comments. Leave new
The most expensive supermarket, paying us 8 pence above minimum wage. What reset?
Performance pay does not work!! Very hit and miss. If your face fits.
The real living wage should paid, setting a precedence to attract and retain high calibre staff. Rather than knowingly underpaying staff and being one of the lowest paying supermarket chains.
Also they don’t give you a payrise if you have been off sick with for example a virus or broken leg or took time off die a death. You go above a certain percent and they punish you by giving everyone else a pay rise apart from you. But expect you to out out the same if not more work then everyone else. Waitrose don’t care about their staff.
Did they really do that! Do they really pay some staff less because they have been off sick? Less than the minimum they advertise for new store staff? isn’t that discriminatory?
Get rid of all the excess office staff and managers, invest in the shop workers who actually do the work!
Working harder than ever before; they will need to come up with a substantial wage increase to reward those that keep the partnership running. Yes, JLP, time to cough up particularly as bonuses may never happen again and inflation has all but killed any other benefits.
Proper trickle down needs to happen now. It could be a great selling point for the partnership.
Lidl,Aldi,asda, Tesco,sainsburys even CO-O P! Pay more than us once we get our raises. which by the way is the biggest raise the partnership has ever done apparently………marketing which is trying to deflect from the truth. Us as partners have been under paid for a long time and the partnership should be ashamed to be saying it’s the biggest raises they’ve ever done and are behind in minimum wage buy at least 50p buy most of our competitors. With More and more responsibility being hand out to staff. If ever there was a reason to strike it is now, but the partnership has been so poorly run for so long I’m not even sure they could survive the long term effects.