Boots, John Lewis and Burger King in jobs cull
BOOTS and John Lewis shed thousands of staff yesterday as a jobs bloodbath swept through Britain’s high streets.
The pharmacy chain axed 4,000 workers and closed 48 stores, citing the ‘significant impact’ of Covid-19, while John Lewis shut eight large stores, putting 1,300 employees at risk.
Burger King also announced it would shutter one in ten outlets, jeopardising 1,600 positions.
The number of jobs lost at big UK firms has climbed to 205,000, with more than three million people signing up to Universal Credit.
Around 5,000 employees have gone at Cath Kidston, Laura Ashley, Harveys furniture store, Monsoon, Accessorize and Harrods.
And last night, General Electric said that it was axing 369 staff at its airline engine maintenance plant in South Wales.
Boots, which has 2,600 UK stores, will cut 7 per cent of its staff and close 48 optician outlets. It is already closing 140 stores this year as part of a long-term plan. The latest move will particularly hit staff in its Nottingham head office, but also shop managers and frontline workers, including beauty assistants.
Revenues in its stores have halved during lockdown.
John Lewis yesterday said that eight of its 50 stores will permanently close as fearful shoppers pull back from the high street in favour of buying online.
The department store chain said the decision was made to secure the long-term future of the business.
The closures will come in Birmingham and Watford, along with four At Home stores in Croydon, Newbury, Swindon and Tamworth, and travel sites in Heathrow and St Pancras.
Around 1,300 of its workers, known as partners, will now enter consultations over the cuts.
Burger King said that even with Government support, the chain is likely to close up to 10 per cent of stores – resulting in 800 to 1,600 staff losing their jobs.
The job losses put pressure on Rishi Sunak’s £30billion jobs stimulus, which was criticised yesterday for being too small.
The Chancellor said yesterday: ‘If you’re asking me, can I protect every single job, of course the answer is no.
‘Is unemployment going to rise and are people going to lose their jobs? Yes, and the scale of this is significant. We are entering one of the most severe recessions this country has ever seen.’
There are concerns that the pace of lay-offs will increase when the furlough scheme, which pays 80 per cent of wages, is wound down.
From August 1, employers will contribute part of the cost of employing staff, and the scheme will cease at the end of October.
‘The scale of this is significant’
WE’VE had the carrot. Now we need the stick. Chancellor Rishi Sunak has produced an imaginative and comprehensive blueprint for recovery. But to make it happen, the workers of Britain must get back to business.
Stay at home to save lives, the nation was told. And we obeyed. But what was a duty has become a habit. Zoom meetings, lunch with the family, soaking up the sun.
As the commuting classes settle into comfortable inertia, however, another crisis looms. The economy has shrunk by 25 per cent since March, wiping out the growth of the past 18 years. The outlook is bleak.
Yet banks and corporations seem happy to wait until September before they even try to get back to normal. In Whitehall, government departments are virtually deserted, with civil servants remaining at home on full pay.
Meanwhile, small firms which rely on footfall go broke. If our high streets remain empty, businesses will fail. Closures at Boots and John Lewis drive home the reality of the threat.
Yes, coronavirus is still with us. But the infection rate has fallen to just one in every 3,900 people and overall deaths are now lower than the average for the past five years.
As the Covid menace recedes, the torpor in which the nation finds itself becomes the greater threat. Mass unemployment, poverty and social division are now a real peril. The impact on human health – both mental and physical – also threatens to surpass the toll of the virus if we continue to cower indoors.
The Government must now turbo-charge the workforce and get Britain moving again.
The wake-up call is well overdue.