Thousands of Scottish Tesco Bank workers to get £1,250 'cost-of-living' pay rise

Tesco Bank, the Edinburgh-based financial offshoot of the supermarket giant, is giving thousands of staff a £1,250 cost-of-living pay rise.

The bank said some 3,400 workers would receive the pay increase, on a full-time equivalent basis, to help with double-digit inflation and soaring energy bills. More than 90 per cent of the bank’s workforce, those who are likely to be “feeling the greatest impact from current cost of living challenges”, it noted, are eligible for the increase, which is effective from this month. The uplift to salaries, which followed discussions between Tesco Bank and both the USDAW and Unite trade unions, is in addition to the group’s annual pay review, which will follow in May as normal.

Tesco Bank was founded in 1997 and has thousands of people working across its main centres in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle and Reigate. In Scotland, the bank has about 2,700 staff overall. It has more than five million customers.

Gerry Mallon, chief executive, said: “The rising cost of living is having an impact on households across the country, and we’ve been listening to colleagues about how this is affecting them. That’s why we’ve taken action and awarded a permanent increase to base pay for the majority of our colleagues. The salary increase aims to provide sustainable, long-term support to colleagues, including our contact centre colleagues who show great commitment to helping our customers in the current economic climate.”

Tesco recently revealed that group like-for-like sales, excluding fuel, grew by 7.9 per cent over the six weeks to January 7, compared with the same period last year.