Aldi has revealed a pay enhancement for its workforce, maintaining its position as the º£½ÇÊÓƵ's highest-paying supermarket.
The revised minimum hourly rate, rising to £14.33 within the M25, will come into force from 1 September this year, as reported by .
It substantially surpasses the Real Living Wage of £12.60 per hour established by the Living Wage Foundation in October last year.
"This latest investment in pay is a reflection of [our staff's] hard work and the incredible contribution they make every single day," Aldi CEO Giles Hurley said.
"Our people are the driving force behind our success across the º£½ÇÊÓƵ... We're proud to remain the º£½ÇÊÓƵ's highest-paying supermarket and will continue to support our colleagues in every way we can," Hurley added.
The government raised both the minimum wage and the Real Living Wage in last October's budget, with the Real Living Wage climbing to £12.60 in º£½ÇÊÓƵ and £13.85 in London.
The adjustment provided half a million Living Wage workers with a salary increase, though it attracted some criticism from struggling businesses, which contended the elevated benchmark represented an unsustainable rise in expenditure.
The British Retail Consortium stated that the minimum wage uplift would force retailers to spend an additional £2.73bn per year, a significant factor in the £7bn in extra costs post-Autumn budget.
Others, like Dunelm's CEO Nick Wilkinson, suggested that the money would prompt an increase in consumer confidence – owing to higher disposable income – and cascade through the market, stimulating demand. "Those national living wage increases are also going into the consumer market... we have many more customers than we do employees, so in general it's very good for us to see consumer confidence growing, disposable income increasing [and] pay going up slightly higher than the level of inflation... Those are all good impacts for us," he said.
