Waitrose accused of slashing redundancy pay

Waitrose has been accused of cutting redundancy pay-outs for 500 warehouse staff at risk of losing their jobs.

Bosses at John Lewis Partnership – which includes both John Lewis and Waitrose – revealed earlier this year its intention to halve redundancy pay-outs, effectively making it cheaper for workers to be laid off.

Under the new policy, staff members will now only be paid one week’s pay per year of service alongside statutory government payouts, after bosses called the retailer’s former two-week policy “higher than typical market practice” and coming at a “very high cost”.

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Yet employees have now claimed that a review into the expected closure of an Enfield warehouse, dubbed ‘Project Hazel’ and due to impact over 500 workers, had begun before the partnership had made changes to its redundancy policy, The Telegraph reported.

A group of warehouse workers have launched a counter proposal. They said: “Considering Project Hazel was up and running long before the changes in the redundancy package were discussed, the earlier redundancy package should be the package used when dealing with affected partners.”

However, it is understood that this counter proposal has been rejected by John Lewis Partnership, which in response argued that the impending closure was only formally settled on 6 March, “which was after the announcement of the new redundancy pay terms”.

The grocer’s latest pay dispute follows in the wake of the partnership revealing hundreds of outsourced customer service workers on the Waitrose account that previously faced redundancy were no longer at risk.