Asda is facing the looming prospect of a strike by distribution warehouse staff in the New Year, after workers voted to move to a formal strike ballot.
The long-running battle between Asda and GMB looks set to drag into the New Year, with the potential for strike action from warehouse workers and HGV drivers after 94% of staff voted to move to a formal strike ballot stage on Tuesday (21 December).
GMB said the latest move towards a strike came after Asda “failed to offer distribution staff a meaningful pay offer - with inflation running at a 10-year high”.
The union also said that “Asda’s directors trousered £12.6m in pay and share based payments, while the company turned an operating profit of £486m in the year to 31 December 2020.”
Christmas not affected
This dispute between Asda and its warehouse workers is also running parallel to a long-running pay dispute with its predominantly female shopfloor staff over equal pay. GMB said it had written to the grocery giant this week “asking if it is holding back distribution workers’ pay because of potential future liabilities in a long-running equal pay claim.”
A source close to the grocer said the retailer was due to sit down with GMB in January, and said there would be no danger of strike action affecting Christmas.
An Asda spokesman said: “GMB has recently made an additional pay claim on top of a two-year deal which was agreed with them in May. As our annual pay negotiations have just begun and discussions are ongoing, any talk of industrial action is premature. We had previously responded to the driver shortage by offering all of our existing HGV drivers a £1,000 one-off discretionary incentive retention payment.”
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