Britain’s Sainsbury’s gives staff third pandemic bonus

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s second largest supermarket group Sainsbury’s will award its staff a third bonus for their efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, it said on Friday.

Sainsbury’s has 172,000 workers, making it one of Britain’s biggest private sector employers.

The third one-off payment will be made to staff working in stores, as well as logistics and customer care teams in May.

It will be based on 3% of an employee’s annual pay, so a full-time staffer would receive over 530 pounds ($739).

Sainsbury’s also announced a pay increase for store staff.

It said that from March the hourly rate of pay for Sainsbury’s and Argos store workers would increase to 9.50 pounds ($13.25) – an increase from 9.30 pounds for a Sainsbury’s worker and 9.00 pounds for an Argos worker.

Workers in central London will see their pay rise to 10.10 pounds an hour.

The group said the latest rise means pay for store staff has increased by 24% over the last five years.

Sainsbury’s said in January that after forgoing business rates relief of 410 million pounds it expected to report a year to March 2021 underlying pretax profit of “at least” 330 million pounds, down from 586 million pounds in 2019-20.

($1 = 0.7171 pounds)

(Reporting by James Davey; Editing by Alistair Smout)