‘They attack like a wave’ working at Asda
Adam King* has worked at a Asda store in Cheshire East more than 15 years. Here, he reveals what it’s like working at Asda over the Christmas period and how morale in store is at an all-time low.
The amount of stock we’re dealing with and the number of customers coming in can treble in December.
It means that Christmas Day becomes just another day to me, it’s just a day off because you’ve been working non-stop.
Now we only get one half-an-hour break for a nine-hour shift, whereas we used to get two, so it’s more tiring and we don’t get paid for it.
When I first started you used to get double time and a day off in lieu if you worked Boxing Day, now it’s normal rate and if you don’t want to work it you have to use annual leave.
We used to get a Christmas dinner, a box of chocolates and free drinks but we don’t get that anymore. All the perks have been slashed which is why morale has dropped.
There’s a couple of days during the Christmas period where we open at a minute past midnight. Usually, we end up getting a couple of hundred customers flooding through the doors as soon as they open.
They attack like a wave flooding through the store. It will be interesting to see how that’s dealt with this year.
Since the start of the pandemic we’ve had fewer staff in but there’s been no cover provided so we’ve had a lot more work.
It’s put us under a lot of pressure, which means more staff get sick because they’re overdoing themselves. It’s a never-ending cycle.
Customers come in and they’re not following safety measures and no one is enforcing them. It feels like Asda is more concerned about profit than our safety.
I used to enjoy working at Asda but there’s no pleasure for me there anymore.
The atmosphere is completely different in there now. It’s gone from being a nice place to work to somewhere you just have to turn up and do your shift.
To have a job you no longer enjoy and then to find out you’re being paid less than somebody that’s doing the same job as you but in reverse is a bit of a joke.
I’ve been to a depot and seen what they do. It’s a pickers job to pick something off a shelf, put it on a pallet, and wrap it. I do the same but the other way around.
I look at things simply and, to me, I can’t see how Asda can justify that.
Join The Claim
Thousands of Asda store workers have joined the Asda Equal Pay Claim to take legal action against the company. Their demand is clear. They want to be treated fairly and to receive a well-deserved and long overdue pay rise. This doesn’t just affect people working at Asda, thousands of supermarket store workers across the UK work in similar conditions.
If you would like to learn more about the claims we are bringing on behalf of supermarket workers, please click here.
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