Asda is threatening to take legal action to stop a potential strike over staff pay rights, which could see its supplies disrupted during the World Cup period, according to Reuters.com.
Depot workers are currently voting on strike action over a collective pay bargaining row, the report said. If they decide to back industrial action, the retailer could face supply difficulties during the increased period of consumer purchasing forecast for the duration of the World Cup competition.
Representing union members at 20 of Asda’s depots in the UK, the GMB - Britain’s General Union representing 600,000 workers in the UK - was in talks with Asda chief executive Andy Bond last week, but both sides were unable to make any progress on the issue, Reuters reported.
The strike ballot focuses directly on the union's aim to have national negotiating rights covering all Asda's depots, Reuters said, but the retailer has responded by saying nine of its depots already have collective bargaining agreements, and it would be happy for other depots to get them - if the majority of staff want it.
Reuters said that Asda has written to the GMB threatening legal action, particularly as it believes the union has overestimated the number of Asda's 12,500 depot workers belonging to the union at its 24 depots around the country. The union believes the figure is around 7,000 while Asda thinks the number is closer to 4,500.
Asda Director David Smith wrote in a letter to the GMB union: “We'd only take legal action as a last resort…As our colleagues already know, there's a great offer on the table that could lead to collective bargaining at all our depots, if that is what our colleagues tell us they want. We simply want all our own people to have the right to decide, not just those that are union members.”
The decision whether to strike is expected to be announced at the end of the postal deadline on Wednesday.
While the decision is still up in the air, Reuters said union officials are “concerned” by the retailer’s drafting of agency workers to cover any staff shortages a strike would cause.
A spokeswoman for Asda told Reuters: “We do have agency workers in our depots at the moment covering absences and sicknesses and helping us with the extra volume of business that the World Cup has meant but that’s no different from any other time of the year. “There a very clear rules in place for employing agency labour during industrial action - if it comes to that - we have absolutely no intention of breaking them.”
