Tesco staff to see pay rise to £10.10 an hour

Tesco staff are set to see pay rise to £10.10 an hour from the end of July, the supermarket giant has announced.

The UK's biggest private employer said staff wages will rise by 55p, up from £9.55 an hour, from 24 July.

Meanwhile, its delivery drivers and click and collect assistants will get a 90p increase to £11 an hour.

Tesco's move brings it in line with Lidl and Aldi, which became the UK's highest-paying supermarkets this year with the same hourly rate.

Union Usdaw said Tesco's pay rise was "testament" to the hard work of staff at what it said was a "difficult time".

The new pay deal will be handed to workers in stores and customer fulfilment centres.

Last year, Morrisons became the first UK supermarket to announce it would pay at least £10 an hour from April 2021.

Sainsbury's said in January it would pay shop workers at least £10 an hour, while the supermarket is expected to make a further announcement tomorrow on wages.

Jason Tarry, chief executive officer of Tesco UK & ROI, said employees were getting a "well-deserved pay rise, more access to extra hours, and setting out a long-term commitment and investment in their careers at Tesco".

Tesco store workers in London will get a similar increase bring their hourly pay to £10.78 per hour.

Alongside pay rises, Tesco is to increase its "colleague clubcard" discount allowance by £500 to take the annual total allowance for all colleagues to £1,500 with immediate effect.

Usdaw national officer Daniel Adams said the union was "pleased" to secure a pay deal that not only delivered "the highest hourly rate of pay in the sector", but also gave members a right to request a "normal hours" contract and ensured a minimum 16-hour contract in the future.

Tesco employs about 300,000 people in the UK, and most of them work on the shop floor.

Upping the core hourly wage by an extra 55p will add £200m to the wage bill.

There's a battle to recruit and retain staff in many parts of the economy right now.

As Britain's biggest retailer, Tesco needs to stay competitive on pay. It can also afford to do so.

Tesco's been doing very well. It has momentum and scale in a sector that's as cut throat as it's ever been.

This move also puts pressure on other retailers as they wrestle with soaring cost increases and how much of these they can pass on to consumers.

Shop workers face the same cost of living pressures as everyone else and more pay deals are on the cards over the coming months.

Earlier on Thursday, telecoms giant BT said it would hand its UK frontline workers a £1,500 pay rise in the company's biggest pay increase for more than 20 years.

BT said the increase was "focused on the lowest paid workers" including engineers, contact centre staff and retail staff, and would work out as a roughly 8% increase for some.

But the offer was rejected by the Communication Workers Union. It tweeted that it had "no choice now but to immediately prepare for a statutory industrial action ballot".

People in the UK are facing increased pressure from living costs, with inflation rising at its fastest rate for 30 years, driven up by surging fuel, energy and food prices.

The National Living Wage, which applies to workers over the age of 23, has increased from £8.91 per hour, to £9.50 per hour from this month. The National Minimum Wage, for those aged 21 to 22, has gone up to £9.18.

The rate at which prices rise has been forecast to reach 8.7% in the final three months of 2022.