Tesco staff were reportedly given Quality Street in recognition of their hard work over the festive period this year in lieu of a Christmas bonus amid the cost of living crisis.
The supermarket paid its workers a 10% Christmas bonus in 2020, and in previous years has given out shopping vouchers - but according to some workers, all they received this year was a tub of chocolates worth £5 instead. One staff member told The Guardian that it was the second year in a row they had received only Quality Street from their employer, accusing Tesco of "penny-pinching and trying to drive costs down".
The UK's largest supermarket chain upped the pay rate for its shop floor staff twice last year, bringing the hourly wage up to £10.10 in July before increasing it again to £10.30 in October. Tesco said that it has never issued a regular Christmas cash bonus, and added that it helped workers with the cost of Christmas by offering a 20% staff discount on top of their 8% pay rise in 2022.
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Tesco agreed in 2019 to scrap its yearly cash bonus, usually handed out to workers in March, to instead pay staff higher wages. But the supermarket told The Guardian that "special bonuses" were given to shop floor staff in April, May and June 2020 to recognise their "exceptional effort" at the height of the pandemic, as well as in December 2020 during the busy Christmas period.
Tesco is set to announce how much money it made over the festive period next week, with latest figures from Statista indicating that sales at the supermarket increased 2.5% in the 12 weeks up to the start of October. Tesco's CEO Ken Murphy was awarded a staggering £4.74million pay packet last year - more than 400 times the wage of an average Tesco worker - over £3 million of which was given as a bonus.
Tesco responded: "We have never given a regular cash bonus at Christmas and it is wrong to suggest that we have replaced one with chocolates. To help colleagues with their Christmas shopping this year, we doubled our colleague discount to 20% in the run-up to Christmas – one of many benefits available to our colleagues, on top of the near 8% increase in base pay we invested over last year."
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