Tesco staff win High Court case against ‘unfair’ fire and rehire policy

A group of Tesco workers has won a High Court battle against the supermarket’s fire and rehire tactics.

Retail trade union Usdaw brought the case on behalf of 42 workers employed at Tesco’s Daventry and Litchfield distribution centres after the supermarket giant tried to cut their wages as part of a change to their terms and conditions of employment.

In the ruling handed out today (February 3), the court noted that the workers had been guaranteed an entitlement to a specific payment labelled ‘retained pay’ to keep them within the business, which Tesco intended to remove by firing and then rehiring them.

The judge held that there was an implied term in the workers’ contracts that the right to terminate employment could not be exercised if the aim was to remove a right to ‘retained pay’.

“This is a huge win for the workers and for Usdaw,” Neil Todd, a trade union specialist at Thompsons Solicitors who represented the workers.

“Tesco had made unequivocal commitments to its workers who had come into work throughout the lockdown, when it needed them most. The court agreed that, in those circumstances, it wasn’t then open to them to deploy fire and rehire tactics when it suited them.”

Usdaw said the High Court ruling will prevent the supermarket’s ‘fire and rehire’ practice in this case where it had sought to lay people off and re-employ them on new contracts, with less favourable terms and conditions, in England.

Tesco workers in Scotland have already secured an injunction, pending a full trial, on the same proposal.

Commenting, Usdaw national officer Joanne McGuinness said Tesco made assurances in 2007, when it started a vital distribution expansion programme, that staff would retain the difference in their pay on transfer to new distribution sites.

“Importantly they assured Usdaw that this would not be removed at a future date. Despite this, some 14 years later Tesco reneged on its promises and sought to buy out this retained pay and threatened its employees with dismissal if they did not sign up to a new contract without the retained pay element” McGuinness said, adding that Tesco refused to negotiate with the union, forcing them to seek a legal solution.