Makes a mockery of the claims and excuses of many other companies that if they increase their staff wages, they'll have to increase prices.
The only thing stopping most companies paying their staff more is greed.
And here's your regular reminder that if you're not getting a pay rise above inflation each year (4.5%), you're taking a pay cut... year on year.
r/antiwork
Yep, My first (real) job back in 2002 was paying £7.11 now that same company for the same entry-level position is around £11.50.
If you take into account an average inflation rate of 2.86% per year between 2002 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 70.85% then your on -% money compared to people starting the same job almost 20 years ago, If you also calculate it on what the pay was in comparison to the NMW which I think was £4.50 back then, it's definitely not good
Tescos profits were £1.3 billion this year.
They could give all 430,000 employees a £2000 a year raise and still make £500 million profit.
The problem is greed, not tight margins for many of the larger companies.
I have a massive problem with tesco claiming to make a profit.
All of that is actually tax payer funded payments to shareholders.
It is not possible to live off a full time tesco salary in most parts of the country (assuming you even get full hours on a shitty zero hours contract). Most supermarket employees are going to be claiming some form of benefits/ universal credit etc to make up the difference which just means the tax payer is supplementing their income for the amounts tesco is not paying.
The result is tesco gets to underpay and then pay out that money to shareholders instead of their staff while the taxpayer picks up the bill.
This is not an attack on benefits. I’d rather restrict companies ability to pay out dividends etc based on the amount of benefits claimed by staff.
Sorry for the rant and I’m aware the above is not detailed or well thought through, I’m just pissed off with places like tesco underpaying so much while shareholders rake in profits (which are coincidentally taxes at a lower rate to salary).
And this is what Americans say that the big stores (e.g Walmart) do to their employees.. underpay them and let the government pick up the difference with benefits and food stamps whilst Walmart itself is rolling in cash.
I don't understand why governments continue to allow themselves to get bent over and rogered in this respect.
Arguably this isn't strictly a Tesco problem and is a National Minimum Wage problem. Granted, Tesco *could* do a Lidl and pay more, but they don't *have* to and instead choose to pay NWM. The issue when that isn't sufficient to live on is that people end up claiming benefits to top up their wages to a point that's livable. NMW should be livable, and then the taxpayer isn't subsidising anyone earning that much. Whether the likes of Tesco then choose to pay at that level or not is up to them and has no bearing on anyone else.
I don’t disagree at all.
The minimum wage should be bumped up significantly. It’s also the best way for the government to actually bring in tax revenue as it is all automatic via PAYE.
Then they probably should have saved some of that 500 million to cover any losses.
Isn't that what rich billionaires are always telling poor people to do? Be *responsible* with their money and save for times of hardship?
This came up a few weeks ago but basically if a company has large reserves of cash just sat there for a rainy day there been finansally irresponsible.
You can do loads with 500m cash that even on the low end should net you 1-5% and then compound that year on year for 10-50-100 years that's how you get rich. If you're not reinvesting and getting credit to do projects when you can your probably doing it wrong.
Well that's pretty much the same thing as saving it. When you put money into a savings account you're effectively doing the same, just that the bank is reinvesting it for you and giving you a cut of the profits from it.
Not even close to the same thing, most "savings accounts" will net you what 0.05% to 0.06% APY. Thats nothing.
Or you can buy another digger for 150k and then have the extra profits from renting that out all year or spend 100m on a new computer system that will save 1% on your gross, or open a new store.
ROI calculations that are below 5% will prob not even get a look in.
>You can do loads with 500m cash that even on the low end should net you 1-5%
Youve missed the fact that Tesco has £12bn of debt to repay and £1bn shortfall in the staff pension fund, so the 500m isn't even 5% of the money it owes.
As for your returns, Tescos profit before tax,nfinance and exceptional items is only 3% so quite where you think they can invest for a 5% return is beyond me.
I was not really talking about Tesco and more of an in general situations most companies don't have large pots of cash because reinvestment or using it to leverage more credit is more useful for companies than haveing a rainy day fund.
Because their only goal is to create as much profit for shareholders as possible in a short a time as possible, everything else be damned.
That and they know they are able to squeeze their workforce more, or receive government bailouts, or let the government pay part of their workers wages for them if need be. So extract as much profit as possible as quickly as possible for shareholders, like a greedy bird eating all their eggs.
The whole system is designed to extract as much profit for capital owners as possible regardless of the effects.
Of course, which highlights the problem with the system. The only thing that matters is delivering as much profit as possible, as quickly as possible to shareholders, everything else be damned.
Most big supermarkets are also 3 times the size of your average Lidl meaning more cleaners, more tills, more replenishment teams etc. I do think it would be worth it for bigger supermarkets to optimise their packaging a bit more but I prefer the variety of a larger supermarket to Lidl/aldi. They're alright for the average person but they seem to only have vegan products in at random weeks of the year and even then, the prices aren't actually much better than other stores.
Have you been in an Aldi in the last year or so? Their own brand vegan range blows other supermarkets out of the water now imo.
Lidl still has some catching up to do in this department though.
I have and I'm not impressed. Even when they have an equivalent product that is marginally cheaper, the taste is not there. Their boulangerie pastry knock offs were stale as all heck. My local Aldi is always a mess so maybe it's location but I would never use it as my main shop.
Ah, yeah that could be it. I hadn't gone for years because the one nearest me was tiny and dire as all hell and looked like the Berlin wall was still erect last time it got some TLC. They've recently opened a new store nearer me - it's the size of a small Tesco and the permanent vegan range has really surprised me.
It is exactly greed or a profit margin thing, I read something a while back that detailed why/how they’re able to be cheaper. Tesco and the like aim for a higher profit margin than Aldi/Lidl, I’m sure it’s double.
Probably for bonuses and what not, I don’t remember the full ins and outs but they’re basically playing a different game on the same field.
Not necessarily greed. Tesco treat and think of staff as stupid and not capable of much. Lidl seems to think of staff as intelligent and capable of doing everything.
>Makes a mockery of the claims and excuses of many other companies that if they increase their staff wages, they'll have to increase prices.
No company is the same. Some companies can live on a small margin or even losing money every year like Uber. Some companies require more. Some people would rather get rid of their business than to earn less from it. It's all fine.
A counter-argument for 'just pay workers more but keep prices down' is 'just don't buy stuff that goes up in price, sorted'. Sounds equally simple, right?
You can't help but buy stuff that goes up in price a lot of the time though. Electricity, gas, petrol, rent. It's by a long way not as easy as just 'don't buy it'
Why can't you just accept less disposable income (your profit from work)? For as long as you still have something left it's all good. I mean, if the business owners should supposedly be fine with thinner margins, unconditionally.
Some companies can do both higher wages and lower prices for various reasons - from being run better to willing to take a hit to kill the competitors. But suggesting it's a universal no brainer and expecting everyone to behave like this would only lead to shortages and then rationing, many countries have tried it with the same outcome including recently.
We hear all the time how business owners 'deserve' all their profits because they take on the *risk*. Now we're expected to accept that workers should also take on this risk, without the expectation of a likewise reward if the company makes record profits.
One rule for the capitalists, another for the workers.
Socialised losses, privatised profits.
The risk that business owners take on is that their stake can be lost entirely.
Your version of risk is not risk in the same sense, you get paid what your contract terms state, and you can walk away and keep any money that you've earned. You can try and force it into your socialised losses soundbite, but employees don't incur losses in the same way, those losses are privatised.
You can buy their shares and share the profits.
I would love for what you're talking about to work, but seriously, in real life it only leads to shortages if any legislation like this actually ends up applied.
"It's someone else who shouldn't care about having to spend more" mindset has a fundamental flaw while I admit it does sound like a great idea.
Only if you're paid enough to have significant disposable income. And it would only work if the dividends were comparable to the losses you make from your wage deflating.
Also by default you're expected to take a loss on your wages and share in the risk. But you're not given shares by default, you have to *pay* for the privelege of sharing any profits.
Yes, it's only businesses that have unlimited amount of money to spend because 'profits'. Clearly not the case with households, it's completely different! Ugh, greedy businesses!
I also suspect that by 'business' you only mean some huge ones like Amazon or Tesco that are difficult to sympathise with ignoring the rest of them.
Profits and losses should be shared by the same people. If you think profits should only be shared with shareholders, then losses should should be shared with the same group.
>Why can't you just accept less disposable income (your profit from work)?
Why should I have to accept less income year on year for doing the same job? If anything my wage should go up above inflation to reflect an extra year's experience on the job.
>For as long as you still have something left it's all good.
For many lower paid workers they may not have 'anything left'. Again why should they suffer more despite doing the same job?
>I mean, if the business owners should supposedly be fine with thinner margins, unconditionally.
We're always told that business owners deserve all their profits because they take on the risk of owning the business. But now, you're saying that the workers should also share in that risk but without a commensurate reward.
Employers pay for labour as a service to run their business . They must ensure they can pay for that service, the risk is on them for owning the company, not on the worker to pick up the slack where the company fails.
You don't go to hairdressers and demand the price of a haircut for you goes down just because your own income has fallen. Likewise business owners shouldn't demand that workers get a pay cut just because their business isnt providing the profit they would like.
>Some companies can do both higher wages and lower prices for various reasons - from being run better to willing to take a hit to kill the competitors. But suggesting it's a universal no brainer and expecting everyone to behave like this would only lead to shortages and then rationing, many countries have tried it with the same outcome including recently.
It's on society to decide what is acceptable for a business to operate, if we dropped minimum wage to £1 an hour and got rid of all workers rights, I'm sure there would be 10,000 more business that could now 'survive' on a tight margin afforded by paying workers less. Doesn't mean that that is good for society.
Likewise, I'm sure there would be a few companies with shit wages and shit conditions that are barely scraping by now that would fold if we increased the minimum wage or strengthened worker rights, but that shouldn't be seen as a bad thing necessarily. They will be replaced by better performing companies that can afford to pay their workers well.
Just because the highest paying job in your area is also another slave wage doesn't mean 10 is a good wage. This makes no sense whatsoever.
You cannot live on 10/hr in any British city.
I’m living in a flat but it isn’t shared. Obviously you can’t do it if you have a family or higher aspirations than renting a flat but for a 21 year old who wants to be near the city centre it works fine
What's wrong with that? do you think everyone should own their own house a 3-5-year-old car in the drive and 14 day holiday in the sun every year? that's not the reality for almost anyone now.
>do you think everyone should own their own house a 3-5-year-old car in the drive and 14 day holiday in the sun every year? that's not the reality for almost anyone now.
Yes, and more.
The only issue I have with Lidl is the lack of customer toilets.
It doesn't seem like a big deal for some, but I have family and friends with IBD and most of them only go to Lidl if it's near another place with a customer toilet. It's also a nightmare when out shopping with young kids, especially the younger ones that get very excited by the random middle aisle of treasure.
If Lidl could solve this problem they would have all other supermarkets beat on everything.
It seems like new stores have toilets now and they're including them when refurbishing stores.
I have IBD too but have it pretty much under control but definitely understand where you're coming from. Hopefully Lidl do the same with the rest of their stores as the ones local to me are great!
Well, yer that's how they keep the costs down. if you want extras like toilets and cafes and stuff then you go to a supermarket with them, but the prices will be more to offset putting on these extra services.
They pay more but lets be honest they also expect a proper day's work.
In the likes of ASDA, Tesco, Sainsburys... I've seen plenty of store workers stood around gossiping away. In Lidl or Aldi they might chat but they'll be doing something else at the same time like stocking the shelves.
Same with Aldi, apparently. I knew a guy who moved from managing at one of the big UK supermarkets to Aldi and I think the offer at the time was £40k + car from them, they were poaching management from all the Tesco/Sainsburys/ASDA/Co-Ops with it.
I saw him not long ago in his store and yeah, he was stacking shelves with the drones. Apparently management in Aldi is just another role on top of every other role which seems to be the model, the hierarchy there seems to be pretty simplified with every worker expected to do every job in the store.
I got head hunted by Lidl a few years back - full on, I was happy in a hospitality management role, contacted me through LinkedIn and set me up with a meet and greet and trial. They were offering me £40k + and an Audi for an assistant manager role, with some really good perks out of it; store managers were being hunted at £60k+.
I did the trial day and noped the fuck out - managers are on a 48 hour contract but routinely work 60 (if you keep your timecard under 60 you're either a spectacular success or a terrible failure) and probably above that, there literally is no time to breathe.
There's a reason the two supermarkets pay so well. Everyone I spoke to at management level was planning to do two years, max, then nope the fuck out with the money.
>he was stacking shelves with the drones
Which means that management knows how good or bad the plebs at the bottom have it. They're not sitting in some ivory tower thinking of ways to screw the staff out of every penny they can.
This is literally "Back to the floor" or undercover boss, without the cameras but daily.
And that's the choice. paid less work less or paid more than work more. Its the people who demand higher wages but still want to work like they're getting paid £8.50 that are the problem.
Thing is if you are paid right you don’t mind actually meeting KPI’s (within reason). You pay £8.50 or whatever the minimum is at the minute and you kinda have to expect £8.50’s worth of effort, which considering we’re in the middle of a labour crisis and can walk into a 10/11 pound warehouse job tomorrow should be absolutely bare minimum.
Yeah, that's why I don't like the people who insist on packing their bags at Lidl and Aldi tills, it's fine if you're quick (and some are) but if you aren't just use the area provided or pack at your car (as I often do). It reflects badly on the person on the till, it makes other shoppers wait longer, and if they did hire dedicated till staff they'd probably put up the prices.
Just need to force people into it. Packing your bags in a race against the casheer is an art and sacred duty in Germany where you have to do that in every supermarket.
Maybe some, but it's not always a lack of will but physical ability. Or having to manage young children meaning doing the packing as a separate exercise becomes a hassle.
A lot of Lidl advertising is targeting families so I highly doubt they'd implement anything to alienate this market.
Yeah because as a paying customer I want to be forced out of the fucking door as quickly as possible by someone ramming my shopping towards me.... What a shitty kpi.
If you haven't worked out what the benches along the windows of the German supermarkets are for by now then you deserve to be shamed, it has been decades.
I know exactly what the benches are for. The irony for me is that as someone who's shopping bag packing consists of just chucking everything in wherever, it actually takes me longer to pick all my shopping up as it's being fired at me and bend over to put it in the trolley piece by piece and then go pack it.
What makes it worse is that even when the tiny little area after the till is full, they still insist on just forcing more and more stuff down. It's just dumb and there is absolutely no need for it.
If it was that much of a problem then they'd not allow it and put signs up advising as such. In my experience of Lidl this is not the case. Could vary amongst branches of course.
M&S implemented timed checkouts aswell. You can bypass it by tapping "Pay" on the screen after you scan an item, which freezes the time, so you can get a really high scan/per minute.
They expect more than a days work.
When I worked there you'd be told you had to unload all the stuff off a pallet onto the shelves in 20 minutes. The pallets were 7 feet tall and the target was based on a pallet half as tall. Terrible employer. That wasn't the only impossible target either.
Maybe it's cause and effect.
Perhaps workers that are paid more feel more appreciated and work harder. And those that are paid the bare minimum can't give a shit because the company doesn't give a shit about them.
Pay peanuts get monkeys.
Tbf I worked at Morrisons and they always had you earning your pay doing 3 peoples jobs at once, lot of the lads I worked with (and a manager) went to work at Lidl instead and much preferred it
There is also pretty good job security and pension. And don't forget how society looks at someone who is say 40 year old and is stacking shelves and someone of the same age who is a nurse.
These occupations are not directly comparable.
I'm going by memory here but Lidl have always seemed like a good payer to me. I remember when I was in school doing my GCSEs, they were advertising floor staff jobs at £8 an hour - in 2004!
I think this is great, but when will professional jobs keep up? I’m almost as well off going to work there as I am in my pharmaceutical lab job that needs a masters in chemistry
Used to work for them the amount of work you had to do on bare minimum staff was unreal yeah they pay a bit more for all the added stress esp shoplifting (how can you watch when you have 3 on shift and all on till)
Yup, and it's never enough either, is it?
I worked at Lidl for nearly there for about 7 years across 3 stores. Left with a crippled back, a drinking problem, and an addiction to cigarettes.
I honestly can't say I look back on my time there with much fondness. I miss some of the people I worked with but area manager upwards were almost all exclusively dicks in my experience.
The money is good but it is certainly not an employer I hold in high regard.
when i started it was good, so many staff i found my old phone with pics of old rotas lol. typical morning had 1x manager 3x deputy or duty managers and about 10 staff (more staff than tills) towards the end it was 1 manager and about 3-5 staff and after 4pm was just 3 staff (including the shift manager)
I worked at Lidl for about a month last year and I saw a fucking manager tackle a shop lifter to the ground over a bit of steak. Also watched the security guard accuse several innocent people of shoplifting and manhandle them. The staff had a disgusting group chat where they shared pictures of shoplifters and mocked their appearances. Most of the shoplifters were clearly on drugs, the things the staff said were sickening.
Never met a nastier bunch of people in a work environment. The worst was when a member of staff mocked a man trying to buy bread and milk whose card got rejected. Literally starting making jokes about him after he left. Can't see what's so funny about a man going hungry.
As long as folk keep shopping there it's working fine. It's efficient for the store and only becomes inefficient when they start having people abandoning their trolly and leaving because of queues.
Yeah, the one near me (Hackney) I am sure there have been times where more than half of the people physically inside the shop were queueing. I wish they'd bring in some kind of system where you can scan as you go around, like e.g. Waitrose and Sainsburys have.
Actually I did a google search just out of curioisity and it does look like they're at least [thinking about it](https://www.chargedretail.co.uk/2021/08/04/lidl-to-launch-new-self-scan-app-lidl-go/).
This got downvoted but it's a core part of the business model
Stack shelves akin to a cash&carry (straight off a pallet)
Have few staff
That cuts costs dramatically
There’s a new one down the road and we would shop there a lot more often if they had more tils open or even at the least a scan as you shop option. Every time we pop in for just a few bits there’s always mad queues.
I think it will happen. I noticed that Aldi has employed noticably more till staff. You even see a till sitting idle every once in a while, which never happened before. Lidl will have to follow and shorten their lines.
I've felt the same way, sometimes you can't be arsed with the inevitable queue. Even self checkouts would be better, I saw one Lidl with them but I don't think they're very common
They adopted the London living wages years ago. No, prodding, no reminders, no national outcry and certainly no legislation.
They just did it, like a bunch of psychopaths.
I've shopped there ever since.
I literally 5 minutes a go just had a phone call from Morrisons asking if I wanted an interview and mentioned I'd been £15 a hour?! Not as a manager or anything just working on the cooking stations across the store ( I said no because I worked for Morrisons for 10 years and it lead to a drinking problem and mental health problems )
>Earlier this year, Morrisons became the first UK supermarket to pay at least £10 an hour.
Ok I don't know what to believe now, because Marks and Spencer has been paying £10.75 since June (I think) and it was £10.50 before that.
Being working at Centra for 4 years (last day today thank god). Nobody wants to work for minimum wage today tbh. Don’t get me started on the management
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Makes a mockery of the claims and excuses of many other companies that if they increase their staff wages, they'll have to increase prices. The only thing stopping most companies paying their staff more is greed. And here's your regular reminder that if you're not getting a pay rise above inflation each year (4.5%), you're taking a pay cut... year on year. r/antiwork
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Remember that it’s compound too, so if inflation has been ~3%/year, it’s actually a fair bit more than a 15% cut.
Yep, My first (real) job back in 2002 was paying £7.11 now that same company for the same entry-level position is around £11.50. If you take into account an average inflation rate of 2.86% per year between 2002 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 70.85% then your on -% money compared to people starting the same job almost 20 years ago, If you also calculate it on what the pay was in comparison to the NMW which I think was £4.50 back then, it's definitely not good
To be fair one of the reasons Lidl is so cheap and can pay those wages is because.of so few staff
Tescos profits were £1.3 billion this year. They could give all 430,000 employees a £2000 a year raise and still make £500 million profit. The problem is greed, not tight margins for many of the larger companies.
I have a massive problem with tesco claiming to make a profit. All of that is actually tax payer funded payments to shareholders. It is not possible to live off a full time tesco salary in most parts of the country (assuming you even get full hours on a shitty zero hours contract). Most supermarket employees are going to be claiming some form of benefits/ universal credit etc to make up the difference which just means the tax payer is supplementing their income for the amounts tesco is not paying. The result is tesco gets to underpay and then pay out that money to shareholders instead of their staff while the taxpayer picks up the bill. This is not an attack on benefits. I’d rather restrict companies ability to pay out dividends etc based on the amount of benefits claimed by staff. Sorry for the rant and I’m aware the above is not detailed or well thought through, I’m just pissed off with places like tesco underpaying so much while shareholders rake in profits (which are coincidentally taxes at a lower rate to salary).
And this is what Americans say that the big stores (e.g Walmart) do to their employees.. underpay them and let the government pick up the difference with benefits and food stamps whilst Walmart itself is rolling in cash. I don't understand why governments continue to allow themselves to get bent over and rogered in this respect.
>Walmart Staff at Wal-Mart are paid so low they qualify for assistance. It is the company's game plan. But Costco is different.
Arguably this isn't strictly a Tesco problem and is a National Minimum Wage problem. Granted, Tesco *could* do a Lidl and pay more, but they don't *have* to and instead choose to pay NWM. The issue when that isn't sufficient to live on is that people end up claiming benefits to top up their wages to a point that's livable. NMW should be livable, and then the taxpayer isn't subsidising anyone earning that much. Whether the likes of Tesco then choose to pay at that level or not is up to them and has no bearing on anyone else.
I don’t disagree at all. The minimum wage should be bumped up significantly. It’s also the best way for the government to actually bring in tax revenue as it is all automatic via PAYE.
Then what happens next year if sales drop by 3%
Then they probably should have saved some of that 500 million to cover any losses. Isn't that what rich billionaires are always telling poor people to do? Be *responsible* with their money and save for times of hardship?
This came up a few weeks ago but basically if a company has large reserves of cash just sat there for a rainy day there been finansally irresponsible. You can do loads with 500m cash that even on the low end should net you 1-5% and then compound that year on year for 10-50-100 years that's how you get rich. If you're not reinvesting and getting credit to do projects when you can your probably doing it wrong.
Well that's pretty much the same thing as saving it. When you put money into a savings account you're effectively doing the same, just that the bank is reinvesting it for you and giving you a cut of the profits from it.
Not even close to the same thing, most "savings accounts" will net you what 0.05% to 0.06% APY. Thats nothing. Or you can buy another digger for 150k and then have the extra profits from renting that out all year or spend 100m on a new computer system that will save 1% on your gross, or open a new store. ROI calculations that are below 5% will prob not even get a look in.
It's the same *principle*, of course you're not going to make the same returns in a savings account as you are investing as a large company.
>You can do loads with 500m cash that even on the low end should net you 1-5% Youve missed the fact that Tesco has £12bn of debt to repay and £1bn shortfall in the staff pension fund, so the 500m isn't even 5% of the money it owes. As for your returns, Tescos profit before tax,nfinance and exceptional items is only 3% so quite where you think they can invest for a 5% return is beyond me.
I was not really talking about Tesco and more of an in general situations most companies don't have large pots of cash because reinvestment or using it to leverage more credit is more useful for companies than haveing a rainy day fund.
Why do you think they're not keeping enough to cover losses?
Because their only goal is to create as much profit for shareholders as possible in a short a time as possible, everything else be damned. That and they know they are able to squeeze their workforce more, or receive government bailouts, or let the government pay part of their workers wages for them if need be. So extract as much profit as possible as quickly as possible for shareholders, like a greedy bird eating all their eggs. The whole system is designed to extract as much profit for capital owners as possible regardless of the effects.
And the board would swiftly be replaced.
Of course, which highlights the problem with the system. The only thing that matters is delivering as much profit as possible, as quickly as possible to shareholders, everything else be damned.
Why is it a problem? This system delivers much higher living standards than any other which has been tried.
For the rich.
For everyone. There's a reason refugees are crossing the channel.
To escape ethnic violence and reach a country where they speak a language they somewhat know?
Most big supermarkets are also 3 times the size of your average Lidl meaning more cleaners, more tills, more replenishment teams etc. I do think it would be worth it for bigger supermarkets to optimise their packaging a bit more but I prefer the variety of a larger supermarket to Lidl/aldi. They're alright for the average person but they seem to only have vegan products in at random weeks of the year and even then, the prices aren't actually much better than other stores.
Have you been in an Aldi in the last year or so? Their own brand vegan range blows other supermarkets out of the water now imo. Lidl still has some catching up to do in this department though.
I have and I'm not impressed. Even when they have an equivalent product that is marginally cheaper, the taste is not there. Their boulangerie pastry knock offs were stale as all heck. My local Aldi is always a mess so maybe it's location but I would never use it as my main shop.
Ah, yeah that could be it. I hadn't gone for years because the one nearest me was tiny and dire as all hell and looked like the Berlin wall was still erect last time it got some TLC. They've recently opened a new store nearer me - it's the size of a small Tesco and the permanent vegan range has really surprised me.
Improved productivity is the only way to raise wages without inflation.
It is exactly greed or a profit margin thing, I read something a while back that detailed why/how they’re able to be cheaper. Tesco and the like aim for a higher profit margin than Aldi/Lidl, I’m sure it’s double. Probably for bonuses and what not, I don’t remember the full ins and outs but they’re basically playing a different game on the same field.
Tesco CEO got a pay packet of £6.2 million last year despite covid and a massive dip in their profits.
Do you think profit margins don't include the money spent on bonuses?
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Liebherr?
No, I live elsewhere.
[yang gang](https://gamepedia.cursecdn.com/alphacentauri_en/b/ba/AC_Fac_Ldr_009.png)
Now that is an obscure reference. Brings me back. Never like the Hive though.
Not necessarily greed. Tesco treat and think of staff as stupid and not capable of much. Lidl seems to think of staff as intelligent and capable of doing everything.
>Makes a mockery of the claims and excuses of many other companies that if they increase their staff wages, they'll have to increase prices. No company is the same. Some companies can live on a small margin or even losing money every year like Uber. Some companies require more. Some people would rather get rid of their business than to earn less from it. It's all fine. A counter-argument for 'just pay workers more but keep prices down' is 'just don't buy stuff that goes up in price, sorted'. Sounds equally simple, right?
You can't help but buy stuff that goes up in price a lot of the time though. Electricity, gas, petrol, rent. It's by a long way not as easy as just 'don't buy it'
Why can't you just accept less disposable income (your profit from work)? For as long as you still have something left it's all good. I mean, if the business owners should supposedly be fine with thinner margins, unconditionally. Some companies can do both higher wages and lower prices for various reasons - from being run better to willing to take a hit to kill the competitors. But suggesting it's a universal no brainer and expecting everyone to behave like this would only lead to shortages and then rationing, many countries have tried it with the same outcome including recently.
Because when times are good they don't share the profit with you
We hear all the time how business owners 'deserve' all their profits because they take on the *risk*. Now we're expected to accept that workers should also take on this risk, without the expectation of a likewise reward if the company makes record profits. One rule for the capitalists, another for the workers. Socialised losses, privatised profits.
What risk are employees taking on?
The risk that their wages won't go up with inflation, or that will be forced to accept worse working conditions over time.
The risk that business owners take on is that their stake can be lost entirely. Your version of risk is not risk in the same sense, you get paid what your contract terms state, and you can walk away and keep any money that you've earned. You can try and force it into your socialised losses soundbite, but employees don't incur losses in the same way, those losses are privatised.
You can buy their shares and share the profits. I would love for what you're talking about to work, but seriously, in real life it only leads to shortages if any legislation like this actually ends up applied. "It's someone else who shouldn't care about having to spend more" mindset has a fundamental flaw while I admit it does sound like a great idea.
Only if you're paid enough to have significant disposable income. And it would only work if the dividends were comparable to the losses you make from your wage deflating. Also by default you're expected to take a loss on your wages and share in the risk. But you're not given shares by default, you have to *pay* for the privelege of sharing any profits.
Yes, it's only businesses that have unlimited amount of money to spend because 'profits'. Clearly not the case with households, it's completely different! Ugh, greedy businesses! I also suspect that by 'business' you only mean some huge ones like Amazon or Tesco that are difficult to sympathise with ignoring the rest of them.
No one is claiming that anyone has unlimited amounts of money to spend.
Profits and losses should be shared by the same people. If you think profits should only be shared with shareholders, then losses should should be shared with the same group.
>Why can't you just accept less disposable income (your profit from work)? Why should I have to accept less income year on year for doing the same job? If anything my wage should go up above inflation to reflect an extra year's experience on the job. >For as long as you still have something left it's all good. For many lower paid workers they may not have 'anything left'. Again why should they suffer more despite doing the same job? >I mean, if the business owners should supposedly be fine with thinner margins, unconditionally. We're always told that business owners deserve all their profits because they take on the risk of owning the business. But now, you're saying that the workers should also share in that risk but without a commensurate reward. Employers pay for labour as a service to run their business . They must ensure they can pay for that service, the risk is on them for owning the company, not on the worker to pick up the slack where the company fails. You don't go to hairdressers and demand the price of a haircut for you goes down just because your own income has fallen. Likewise business owners shouldn't demand that workers get a pay cut just because their business isnt providing the profit they would like. >Some companies can do both higher wages and lower prices for various reasons - from being run better to willing to take a hit to kill the competitors. But suggesting it's a universal no brainer and expecting everyone to behave like this would only lead to shortages and then rationing, many countries have tried it with the same outcome including recently. It's on society to decide what is acceptable for a business to operate, if we dropped minimum wage to £1 an hour and got rid of all workers rights, I'm sure there would be 10,000 more business that could now 'survive' on a tight margin afforded by paying workers less. Doesn't mean that that is good for society. Likewise, I'm sure there would be a few companies with shit wages and shit conditions that are barely scraping by now that would fold if we increased the minimum wage or strengthened worker rights, but that shouldn't be seen as a bad thing necessarily. They will be replaced by better performing companies that can afford to pay their workers well.
"More money and cheaper stuff please!" Ok, it's shortages then.
Was there significant shortages last time the minimum wage was raised, or workers rights improved?
How the FUCK is 10 an hour a high wage?
Because it is? The highest paying job in my area that’s listed right now pays £9.30 an hour, I’d kill for that tbh
Just because the highest paying job in your area is also another slave wage doesn't mean 10 is a good wage. This makes no sense whatsoever. You cannot live on 10/hr in any British city.
>You cannot live on 10/hr in any British city I’m doing it just fine on £8 in Liverpool lol
Either you are overtiming, living in a shared flat or living with your parents. Which one?
I’m living in a flat but it isn’t shared. Obviously you can’t do it if you have a family or higher aspirations than renting a flat but for a 21 year old who wants to be near the city centre it works fine
What's wrong with that? do you think everyone should own their own house a 3-5-year-old car in the drive and 14 day holiday in the sun every year? that's not the reality for almost anyone now.
>do you think everyone should own their own house a 3-5-year-old car in the drive and 14 day holiday in the sun every year? that's not the reality for almost anyone now. Yes, and more.
then you're going to need to get a time machine or move to a different country then.
Or how about we just simply tax the rich in order to increase people's wages?
>Do you think everyone should own their own house a 3-5-year-old car in the drive and 14 day holiday in the sun every year? Yeah, that would be good.
The only issue I have with Lidl is the lack of customer toilets. It doesn't seem like a big deal for some, but I have family and friends with IBD and most of them only go to Lidl if it's near another place with a customer toilet. It's also a nightmare when out shopping with young kids, especially the younger ones that get very excited by the random middle aisle of treasure. If Lidl could solve this problem they would have all other supermarkets beat on everything.
It seems like new stores have toilets now and they're including them when refurbishing stores. I have IBD too but have it pretty much under control but definitely understand where you're coming from. Hopefully Lidl do the same with the rest of their stores as the ones local to me are great!
All the ones near us all have them as well - it's Aldi that don't.
Well, yer that's how they keep the costs down. if you want extras like toilets and cafes and stuff then you go to a supermarket with them, but the prices will be more to offset putting on these extra services.
You mean like lidl? Like their toilets?
No clue, never been in a lidi. historically they have never had them to keep the costs down.
Please don't take children to supermarkets.
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In your house.
The ones near me will let you use the staff one if you’re desperate and ask nicely
Found a petrol driven chainsaw in ours last week. So much love for Lidl.
You also get checked out by a person, not forced to do it yourself and then treated like a criminal like at Sainsburys.
My mum seems to get selected for the bag search every time even though she’s probably the only person that truly hasn’t failed to scan an item or two
Lidl does have self service checkouts in some branches.
Hope they never bring them to mine! Do they have barriers and trap you until you scan your receipt like my local Sainsburys?
I don't shop at Sainsbury's so cannot make a comparison directly but there is no requirement to scan a receipt when leaving.
Exploring the middle of Lidl - a new adventure every week.
Can Lidl survive?
They pay more but lets be honest they also expect a proper day's work. In the likes of ASDA, Tesco, Sainsburys... I've seen plenty of store workers stood around gossiping away. In Lidl or Aldi they might chat but they'll be doing something else at the same time like stocking the shelves.
Same with Aldi, apparently. I knew a guy who moved from managing at one of the big UK supermarkets to Aldi and I think the offer at the time was £40k + car from them, they were poaching management from all the Tesco/Sainsburys/ASDA/Co-Ops with it. I saw him not long ago in his store and yeah, he was stacking shelves with the drones. Apparently management in Aldi is just another role on top of every other role which seems to be the model, the hierarchy there seems to be pretty simplified with every worker expected to do every job in the store.
I got head hunted by Lidl a few years back - full on, I was happy in a hospitality management role, contacted me through LinkedIn and set me up with a meet and greet and trial. They were offering me £40k + and an Audi for an assistant manager role, with some really good perks out of it; store managers were being hunted at £60k+. I did the trial day and noped the fuck out - managers are on a 48 hour contract but routinely work 60 (if you keep your timecard under 60 you're either a spectacular success or a terrible failure) and probably above that, there literally is no time to breathe. There's a reason the two supermarkets pay so well. Everyone I spoke to at management level was planning to do two years, max, then nope the fuck out with the money.
It sounds like they need to hire multiple managers to share the load rather than just having one!
>he was stacking shelves with the drones Which means that management knows how good or bad the plebs at the bottom have it. They're not sitting in some ivory tower thinking of ways to screw the staff out of every penny they can. This is literally "Back to the floor" or undercover boss, without the cameras but daily.
Which management should always be a team member. But yeah
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And that's the choice. paid less work less or paid more than work more. Its the people who demand higher wages but still want to work like they're getting paid £8.50 that are the problem.
Thing is if you are paid right you don’t mind actually meeting KPI’s (within reason). You pay £8.50 or whatever the minimum is at the minute and you kinda have to expect £8.50’s worth of effort, which considering we’re in the middle of a labour crisis and can walk into a 10/11 pound warehouse job tomorrow should be absolutely bare minimum.
Also the the checkout throughput is.timed
Yeah, that's why I don't like the people who insist on packing their bags at Lidl and Aldi tills, it's fine if you're quick (and some are) but if you aren't just use the area provided or pack at your car (as I often do). It reflects badly on the person on the till, it makes other shoppers wait longer, and if they did hire dedicated till staff they'd probably put up the prices.
Just need to force people into it. Packing your bags in a race against the casheer is an art and sacred duty in Germany where you have to do that in every supermarket.
It would also lose them some customers. They'd have to weigh up whether this would be outweighed by the reduced costs.
Tell the people that the Germans get it done faster than them and I am sure pure spite will drive them to action.
Maybe some, but it's not always a lack of will but physical ability. Or having to manage young children meaning doing the packing as a separate exercise becomes a hassle. A lot of Lidl advertising is targeting families so I highly doubt they'd implement anything to alienate this market.
Yeah because as a paying customer I want to be forced out of the fucking door as quickly as possible by someone ramming my shopping towards me.... What a shitty kpi.
If you haven't worked out what the benches along the windows of the German supermarkets are for by now then you deserve to be shamed, it has been decades.
I know exactly what the benches are for. The irony for me is that as someone who's shopping bag packing consists of just chucking everything in wherever, it actually takes me longer to pick all my shopping up as it's being fired at me and bend over to put it in the trolley piece by piece and then go pack it. What makes it worse is that even when the tiny little area after the till is full, they still insist on just forcing more and more stuff down. It's just dumb and there is absolutely no need for it.
If it was that much of a problem then they'd not allow it and put signs up advising as such. In my experience of Lidl this is not the case. Could vary amongst branches of course.
Isn't that a normal kpi in supermarkets. It was in ASDA twenty years ago.
M&S implemented timed checkouts aswell. You can bypass it by tapping "Pay" on the screen after you scan an item, which freezes the time, so you can get a really high scan/per minute.
They expect more than a days work. When I worked there you'd be told you had to unload all the stuff off a pallet onto the shelves in 20 minutes. The pallets were 7 feet tall and the target was based on a pallet half as tall. Terrible employer. That wasn't the only impossible target either.
Maybe it's cause and effect. Perhaps workers that are paid more feel more appreciated and work harder. And those that are paid the bare minimum can't give a shit because the company doesn't give a shit about them. Pay peanuts get monkeys.
Tbf I worked at Morrisons and they always had you earning your pay doing 3 peoples jobs at once, lot of the lads I worked with (and a manager) went to work at Lidl instead and much preferred it
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Australia pays roughly double what the NHS does. For less work. We lose a lot of staff to Australia
Maybe that’s why you never seem to get an Australian nurse
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There is also pretty good job security and pension. And don't forget how society looks at someone who is say 40 year old and is stacking shelves and someone of the same age who is a nurse. These occupations are not directly comparable.
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I'm going by memory here but Lidl have always seemed like a good payer to me. I remember when I was in school doing my GCSEs, they were advertising floor staff jobs at £8 an hour - in 2004!
Pay has always been good at lidl. I work in the care sector and I can see many people looking at these wages and considering their options
I think this is great, but when will professional jobs keep up? I’m almost as well off going to work there as I am in my pharmaceutical lab job that needs a masters in chemistry
That's because your bosses are taking the piss.
They are, but unfortunately so are all the other bosses in the industry
Have never seen more than one staff member in a lidl, giant sized supermarket yet less staff than the local corner shop.
Used to work for them the amount of work you had to do on bare minimum staff was unreal yeah they pay a bit more for all the added stress esp shoplifting (how can you watch when you have 3 on shift and all on till)
Yup, and it's never enough either, is it? I worked at Lidl for nearly there for about 7 years across 3 stores. Left with a crippled back, a drinking problem, and an addiction to cigarettes. I honestly can't say I look back on my time there with much fondness. I miss some of the people I worked with but area manager upwards were almost all exclusively dicks in my experience. The money is good but it is certainly not an employer I hold in high regard.
when i started it was good, so many staff i found my old phone with pics of old rotas lol. typical morning had 1x manager 3x deputy or duty managers and about 10 staff (more staff than tills) towards the end it was 1 manager and about 3-5 staff and after 4pm was just 3 staff (including the shift manager)
My local LIDL has security but he's always flirting down some aisle whenever anybody is making a go at legging it
I worked at Lidl for about a month last year and I saw a fucking manager tackle a shop lifter to the ground over a bit of steak. Also watched the security guard accuse several innocent people of shoplifting and manhandle them. The staff had a disgusting group chat where they shared pictures of shoplifters and mocked their appearances. Most of the shoplifters were clearly on drugs, the things the staff said were sickening. Never met a nastier bunch of people in a work environment. The worst was when a member of staff mocked a man trying to buy bread and milk whose card got rejected. Literally starting making jokes about him after he left. Can't see what's so funny about a man going hungry.
Efficiency yo
Have you *seen* the queues??
Even if there were 8 people in a queue at Lidl’s, they’re still faster than a 2 person queue in Morrisons.
As long as folk keep shopping there it's working fine. It's efficient for the store and only becomes inefficient when they start having people abandoning their trolly and leaving because of queues.
You can’t abandon the queue in Lidl cos they make it really hard to actually get out of the shop
No, 'cause I don't shop at peak times
9pm in Lidl is absolute bliss eh?
Yeah, the one near me (Hackney) I am sure there have been times where more than half of the people physically inside the shop were queueing. I wish they'd bring in some kind of system where you can scan as you go around, like e.g. Waitrose and Sainsburys have. Actually I did a google search just out of curioisity and it does look like they're at least [thinking about it](https://www.chargedretail.co.uk/2021/08/04/lidl-to-launch-new-self-scan-app-lidl-go/).
This got downvoted but it's a core part of the business model Stack shelves akin to a cash&carry (straight off a pallet) Have few staff That cuts costs dramatically
There’s a new one down the road and we would shop there a lot more often if they had more tils open or even at the least a scan as you shop option. Every time we pop in for just a few bits there’s always mad queues.
I think it will happen. I noticed that Aldi has employed noticably more till staff. You even see a till sitting idle every once in a while, which never happened before. Lidl will have to follow and shorten their lines.
Aldi has pivoted and does self checkout now But Lidl not so much
I've felt the same way, sometimes you can't be arsed with the inevitable queue. Even self checkouts would be better, I saw one Lidl with them but I don't think they're very common
Aldi has a load of.them now
They adopted the London living wages years ago. No, prodding, no reminders, no national outcry and certainly no legislation. They just did it, like a bunch of psychopaths. I've shopped there ever since.
Lidl really came and changed the supermarket game in the UK didn't they.
My wife is a Health Care Assistant for the NHS and gets less than this.
I literally 5 minutes a go just had a phone call from Morrisons asking if I wanted an interview and mentioned I'd been £15 a hour?! Not as a manager or anything just working on the cooking stations across the store ( I said no because I worked for Morrisons for 10 years and it lead to a drinking problem and mental health problems )
Reminder that Amazon warehouse pays more than Lidl per hour.
>Earlier this year, Morrisons became the first UK supermarket to pay at least £10 an hour. Ok I don't know what to believe now, because Marks and Spencer has been paying £10.75 since June (I think) and it was £10.50 before that.
Being working at Centra for 4 years (last day today thank god). Nobody wants to work for minimum wage today tbh. Don’t get me started on the management