Britain's biggest retailer Tesco set to axe up to 9,000 jobs

• January 31 2019
• http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/britain-s-biggest-retailer-tesco-set-to-axe-up-to-9-000-jobs_155813

LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — Britain's biggest retailer, supermarket group Tesco, said Monday that it planned to axe up to 9,000 jobs under the next stage of a vast restructuring programme, as it continues to come up against increasing competition from German discount retailers Aldi and Lidl.

Tesco, which employs about 300,000 staff in the UK out of a total global workforce of 440,000, added that it would try to find new roles for up to 50 per cent of those affected.

“Overall, we estimate that up to 9,000 Tesco colleague roles could be impacted. however, our expectation is that up to half of these colleagues could be redeployed to other customer-facing roles,” the supermarket said in a statement.

REMAIN COMPETITIVE

“In our four years of turnaround we've made good progress, but the market is challenging and we need to continually adapt to remain competitive,” said Britain and Ireland CEO Jason Tarry.

Tesco said jobs would go as it planned to shut counters at some stores serving items such as fresh fish, meat and cheeses.