UK grocer Morrisons to cut 2,600 store management jobs
Morrisons, Britain's No. 4 grocer, has proposed changes to its store management structure that will…Morrisons, Britain's No. 4 grocer, has proposed changes to its store management structure that will involve around 2,600 redundancies, it said on Tuesday.
The firm, which trails market leader Tesco, Wal-Mart's Asda and Sainsbury's, issued a profit warning in March and set out a plan to combat a loss of trade to discounters as well as a weak overall food market.
That plan called for investing 1 billion pounds ($1.7 billion) in price cuts over the next three years, financed by cost savings of the same amount.
Morrisons said it had begun talks with store staff and their representatives about a new management structure, which would reduce in-store management tiers and simplify responsibilities.
The firm currently trades from 511 supermarkets and 117 M local convenience stores.
It said that in the current year 1,000 jobs would be created in convenience stores and an additional 3,000 in new supermarkets. Colleagues affected by the cutbacks would be offered the opportunity to work in these businesses.
Morrisons posted a 7.1 percent slump in first quarter sales, while this month the strategy of Chief Executive Dalton Philips came under attack from Ken Morrison, the son of the grocer's founder and a former boss
Shares in Morrisons, which have lost 29 percent of their value this year, were up 1.5 percent at 191 pence at 1306 GMT.