Shopworkers at Lidl UK are to be paid a new living wage in a move that the fast-growing discount chain claims is a first in the British supermarket industry.
From next month, all entry-level Lidl UK employees will receive a minimum wage of £8.20 an hour in England, Scotland and Wales and £9.35 an hour in London.
This equates to an average wage increase of £1,200 a year, or 14 per cent, and more than half (53 per cent) of Lidl UK’s 17,000 workforce and all age brackets will benefit.
The rates are those which the Living Wage Foundation, the community-run organisation, is expected call for next month.
The German discount chain has announced the move seven months before George Osborne’s compulsory national living wage