Supermarkets seeking staff and hiking pay

SEVERAL leading supermarket chains are seeking to hire new staff and hiking existing workers’ wages as they strive to keep the food supply chain going amid the Coronavirus crisis.

With grocery retailers at the frontline of the crisis response measures, major retail chains have found themselves under major pressure since the nationwide lock-down began earlier this month.

In the last week, German discount retailers Aldi and Lidl, along with the Musgrave Group – the parent company of the SuperValu, Centra and Daybreak chains – all announced plans to hire hundreds of additional staff to deal with the extra work generated by the COVID-19 outbreak.

Early last week Lidl joined its German discount rival, Aldi, in announcing a major recruitment drive mainly aimed at recently laid-off workers in the hospitality and retail sectors.

“These aren’t the usual circumstances by which we hope to be welcoming new people to our team,’ said Lidl Ireland managing director JP Scally.

“However, we take our responsibility to feed the nation very seriously,” he said. “We want to ensure our front-line team is supported in every way possible. That means hiring additional team members at this difficult period to help us to continue to provide food and supplies to communities.”

The German retailers were soon followed by Musgrave Group.

Musgrave is liaising with leaders of the Restaurants Association of Ireland and the Irish Hotels Federation and encouraging recently laid-off people with any of the specified skill sets to contact their local SuperValu, Centra or Daybreak.

“We are doing all that we can to support communities across Ireland during this difficult time,” said Musgrave chief executive Noel Keeley.

Meanwhile, in addition to seeking new staff, several major retail chains are also bumping up their existing staffs’ wages.

Aldi and Tesco have both announced a 10-per-cent increase in staff wages until the end of April, with other retailers expected to follow suit.