MARKS and Spencers has announced a pay rise for its workers, pushing their wages up to £10 an hour.
A new legal minimum wage of £9.50 an hour comes in for those 23 and over in April anyway, but some supermarkets are already ahead of the game and offer up to 10.57 an hour.
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The minimum wage is currently £8.91, after it rose last year.
But many workers will get an extra 59p an hour when the new rate comes in just over a month’s time.
Most supermarkets have raised their own pay well above that though.
Some have raised wages as a reward for all the hard work staff had put in over the pandemic, while other hiked the stakes to entice new workers to join amid labour shortages.
Marks and Sparks is the latest to join the wage hikes as it gives its workers an extra 50p an hour.
It’s not the most on offer for any prospective retail workers though.
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You could get up to £10.57 with Aldi, but it does require putting a few years into the job, meanwhile Lidl offers £10.10 to anyone outside of London.
Sainsburys and Morrisons are on the same level as Marks and Spencers with a £10 minimum too.
Here’s how all the supermarkets fare, as we rank them from highest pay to lowest:
Aldi: £10.57
If you start off fresh at Aldi you get £10.10, after wages were hiked at the beginning of this month.
You need three years working at the store under your belt to get the £10.57 though.
That’s unless you live in within the M25, where the minimum has risen to £11.55.
Lidl: £10.10
Lidl Entry-level wages go up from £9.50 to £10.10 an hour from March this year.
If you live in London it’s going up from £10.85 to £11.30 as well.
Depending on your length of service it could go up to as much as £11.40 or £12.25 too.
When the wages go up its means a pay rise of over 6% for some of Lidl’s over 21,000 colleagues.
Lidl has said that the rise is to recognise the hard work and dedication of frontline colleagues during the last 18 months of the pandemic.
Morrisons £10.00 8.7%
Morrisons pay is on the same level as Marks and Spencers is now, but the budget supermarket made a bigger leap to get there.
When workers last got a pay rise it went up from £9.20 to £10, boosting workers wages by 80p an hour.
It was also the first UK supermarket to guarantee staff pay of at least £10 an hour, back in January last year.
The rise affected 96,000 Morrisons colleagues – approximately 9% of its workforce.
Marks and Spencer £10.00
The news that Marks and Spencer is upping pay, means workers will get over 5% more.
The wages are going up from £9.50 to £10, plus workers get free health checks as an added bonus too.
The new benefits include access to an online GP service, health check screening and advice on financial management.
The wage hike isn’t due to come in until April, but it means more than 40,000 staff will see their base rate of pay increase by 50p an hour.
In London the rates will rise to £11.25 from £10.75.
Sainsbury’s £10.00
Sainsbury’s is hiking wages for workers this year too.
The store will increase its basic rate from £9.50, to £10 an hour.
It doesn’t just affect supermarket workers either, as anyone under the sister branch, Argos, gets the same pay boost.
Staff won’t see the extra 50p an hour until March 6 though.
Sainsbury’s boss Simon Roberts said the pay boost reflected the progress it was making against its savings plan.
The minimum hourly rate for workers in outer London will also go up from £9.75 to £10.50, and from £10.10 to £11.05 in inner London.
Asda: £9.66
Asda confirmed it will increase hourly rates from £9.36 an hour to £9.66 an hour from April 1 this year.
And London workers will see their pay jump to £10.83 too.
The budget supermarket has received some backlash for not meeting the £10 mark as a minimum, but it has argued before that its bonuses outshine some of the other stores.
The store’s perks include 10% off Asda groceries and George items, and 20% off items in Food to Go in store and petrol filling stations, plus workers get the yearly bonus.
Tesco £9.55
Tesco raised its wages from £9.30 to £9.55 back in September last year.
The store also increased its Night Premium Payments for eligible colleagues from £2.21 to £2.30 – which is an increase of 4.1%.
The Night Premium Payments are the bonus workers get for worker through the very latest and very earliest hours, so some workers do get the opportunity to earn over £10 an hour if they opt for those shifts.
Iceland: £9
Workers at Iceland get paid £9 an hour, with London workers on a £9.90 rate.
The supermarket pays this rate to employees of all ages, including new starters.
Plus it’s the same in sister company, The Food Warehouse.
While it’s not the top paid job, Iceland employees do get a staff discount card which can save them 10% off Iceland and The Food Warehouse stores.
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