Sainsbury’s is cutting 400 jobs, with 4,000 other employees facing a major change to their working hours as part of a shakeup of how the retailer runs it supermarkets.



Sainsbury’s is to scrap the role of price controller within its supermarkets, which will lead to hundreds of jobs being cut. Price controllers ensure that the price labels on supermarket shelves are accurate but this task will now be undertaken by other workers. The affected workers will be offered redundancy or other roles elsewhere in the grocery chain.

Sainsbury’s is also scrapping the night shift in 140 supermarkets. This will affect 4,000 workers, who will be offered early morning or late evening shifts instead.

Unite, the trade union, urged Sainsbury’s to guarantee that there will be no compulsory redundancies.

Julia Long, Unite’s national officer for food and drink, said: “This is very bad news for those dedicated workers affected by the planned job losses and Unite will be giving our members maximum support at this difficult time.

“We appreciate that Sainsbury’s has a good record of redeployment of staff in these situations and we will be exploring every avenue to ensure continuing employment for our members.

“We are now entering the 45-day consultation period and will be having meetings with management, including asking the company if it has done an equalities’ audit of those affected by today’s announcement.”

Britain’s biggest four food retailers – Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons – are overhauling their business models in response to dramatic changes in how Britain buys its food. Supermarkets are losing market share to convenience stores, discounters and online shopping.

In response, they have cut their prices and invested in raising the quality of their products. They are trying to offset this by making their shops more efficient and cheaper to run.



A Sainsbury’s spokesperson said: “We regularly review our business to ensure we are operating as efficiently and effectively as possible and our resources are in the right place, so that we can provide our customers with the best possible service.

“Following a recent review, we are making some changes to administrative roles and night shift patterns in a number of stores, subject to consultation.

“We appreciate this will be a difficult time for those colleagues affected by the changes and will support them in any way we can.”

The news from Sainsbury’s has emerged in the same week that nearly 1,400 UK jobs were put at risk by pharmacy chain Boots, Walkers crisps, and bakery retailer Greggs.

Around 600 jobs are at risk at nine Greggs bakeries while Walkers, which is owned by US food and drink group PepsiCo, is planning to close its manufacturing plant in Peterlee, Durham, by the end of the year.

Boots is shutting more than two-thirds of its photo processing laboratories as demand for traditional photo processing falls, putting up to 400 jobs at risk.