Usdaw signs up a third of staff at Poundland

Shopworker's union Usdaw has signed up nearly a third of Poundland's workforce as members in the past 10 months.

A recognition agreement, struck in October last year, now covers 900 of Pound-land's 3,000 employees, and Usdaw hopes to recruit more.

'The pace of this has been fantastic,' said a spokesman. However, he pointed out that both a greater number and proportion of employees at other retailers are members of the union.

For example, Usdaw has 110,000 members at Tesco, out of the grocer's total UK workforce of 237,000. Usdaw, the UK's fifth largest union, has 335,00 members overall.