Shop Direct axe 2000
Staff to be replaced by machines WEATHER DAMPENS ECONOMY
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All the accounts are protected up to £85,000 by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. EU INVESTIGATORS have raided the London offices of media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox as part of a probe into a possible sports rights cartel.
Officials made an unannounced visit to Fox and other companies in several countries. The exact nature of the investigation is unclear.
Fox, who are trying to buy the whole of satellite giants Sky, said they were “cooperating fully”. ONLINE giants Shop Direct are poised to shed up to 2000 of their warehouse workers.
Union chiefs said staff had been left “deeply shocked and devastated” by plans to close three sites in Greater Manchester.
Shop Direct, who own Very. co.uk and Littlewoods.com, want to shut the depots and replace them with a new state-of-the-art centre – run mainly by machines.
The Liverpool-based company are controlled by billionaire Sir David Barclay and his brother Sir Frederick, who also own the Daily Telegraph and the Ritz hotel in London.
They made a £160million profit last year, with sales reaching nearly £2billion.
Shop Direct said 1177 permanent and 815 staff agency workers at depots in Shaw and Chadderton, both near Oldham, and Little Hulton, near Bolton, will be affected. They said GROWTH in the UK economy halved in the first three months of this year, a top think-tank have warned.
The National Institute of Economic and Social Research reckons the economy expanded by just 0.2 per cent, down from 0.4 per cent in the final quarter of 2017.
Amit Kara, from NIESR, said 500 jobs would be created at the new depot in Leicestershire which is set to be fully running in 2021.
Bosses said greater automation would allow them to increase the cut-off time for next-day deliveries from 7pm to midnight.
Derek Harding, Shop Direct’s stand-in chief executive, said: “These proposals are necessary for our future.”
But Mike Aylward, divisional officer at the union Usdaw, said: “Our members are understandably shocked and devastated by today’s announcement. The company have been providing employment for families for many decades and these sites have different generations of the same families working there.”
Shop Direct trace their roots back to 1890 when Kay and Company was founded.
Littlewoods started in Liverpool in 1932 as a catalogue firm and opened a store five years later. Shop Direct axed their catalogues in 2015. The Barclay brothers “The main reason was severe weather in March, which is likely to have disrupted activity in all major sectors of the economy.”
It came as figures from the Office for National Statistics showed manufacturing output suffered a fall in February.
The 0.2 per cent dip was the first decline in nearly a year. Bad weather was again given as a reason. The slowdown renewed speculation about whether the Bank of England will vote to raise their base rate next month from 0.5 per cent – helping savers but hurting borrowers.
Economist Alan Clarke, of Scotiabank, said: “This weak data shouldn’t be a dealbreaker for a May rate hike, but I’m wary of how many times I’ve said that.” Oil Royal Mail RSA RBS J Sainsbury SSE Severn Trent Serco Sports Direct Shell Sky Smith & Nephew Smiths WH 567.0 652.4 263.2 250.4 1291.0 1850.0 94.1 368.2 2433.5 1310.0 1323.0 1979.0 0.0 -2.0 +0.3 +1.8 +9.5 -5.0 +0.5 +1.1 +14.5 -16.5 -16.5 -14.0 GLOOMY ASOS profits failed to meet expectations