Maintenance staff at John Lewis Partnership risk losing thousands of pounds a year through the loss of bonuses after it was announced their roles would be outsourced to US-owned real estate company CBRE.
Trade union GMB has pledged its support to the 375 department store staff across the country who are impacted, either by taking redundancy or by having their roles outsourced to CBRE.
GMB regional organiser in Berkshire Nikki Dancey said: “CBRE are currently refusing to honour the defined benefit pension scheme, the store discounts, bonuses and other employee benefits that workers have received from John Lewis.”
The John Lewis Partnership announced in January it was subcontracting works to CBRE following an 18-month review of the partnership’s maintenance roles. Of the 375 maintenance staff it employs, 278 will have their contracts transferred under the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations (TUPE). A total of 44 staff retired and the remainder either chose to leave the partnership or were redeployed to another area within the partnership. TUPE transfer rules meant that the partnership did not offer voluntary redundancy.
Dancey said: “Waitrose and John Lewis wish to push on with the cost-cutting, so staff… will be doing the same work but for substantially lower overall pay, terms and conditions.”
A spokesperson for the retailer said: “In January, the John Lewis Partnership announced after an 18 month review our maintenance function would be restructured, moving the majority of activity and service provision to a single maintenance provider - CBRE. This will create a Partnership-wide maintenance function leading to improved service levels whilst maintaining our high standards of health and safety.
“The Partners will move over to CBRE on 1 July 2019 under TUPE and we have been working hard with CBRE to ensure Partners receive beneficial transfer terms. There is no proposal to change the set-up of our transport, drivers and logistics operations.”
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