Next boss slams Labour’s zero-hour contracts crackdown
The boss of Next has slammed the government’s crackdown on zero-hour contracts and called on Labour to unwind its “employment taxes”.
Lord Simon Wolfson, chief executive of the FTSE 100 retailer, said the government’s plans to force employers to offer guaranteed hours to those on flexible contracts will make it “much harder” for Next to offer more hours to its staff.
The new rules would require bosses to offer a fixed contract with guaranteed hours to qualifying workers, but Wolfson said these requirements are difficult because “the risk is you then have to contract for those hours forever”.
“You can’t afford to […] have the same number of people in your shop in February as you have in and around Christmas.
“That’s going to be bad news for our colleagues who want extra hours, particularly students who, in holiday time, need extra hours, and of course bad news for customers because service won’t be as good,” Wolfson told the BBC.
Labour policies ‘making problem worse’
A number of trade bodies have warned the government in recent weeks that these new rules could spike unemployment and prevent young people from getting into work.
Over 946,000 young people are out of education, work and training and an upcoming review is set to find this week that social media and the welfare state are to blame for this “economic catastrophe”.
Wolfson, who is a Conservative peer, said the incoming crackdown on flexible working means “the problem is going to be made worse”.
“We will offer fewer hours. That’s going to be bad news for our colleagues, who want the extra hours. […] And bad news for customers because service won’t be as good,” he said.
The Next boss also called on the government to unwind its hikes to national insurance contributions and the minimum wage, which he said increased the cost of entry level employment by 14 per cent.
“What [the] government should be focussing on is not micromanaging youth unemployment but getting the whole economy moving, and that means reforming planning, energy policy, transport policy,” he said.
Government hits out at Wolfson pay
A government spokesperson said: “Lord Wolfson’s comments are neither new nor surprising.
“The Budget allowed us to stabilise the economy and deliver support for families and businesses, and the UK is the fastest growing economy in the G7 in the first quarter of this year.
“The Employment Rights Act gives people the security they need in their working lives. Lord Wolfson, who earned more than £7m last year, will understand just how important our measures to make work pay are for the financial and job security of working people.”
Wolfson also addressed concerns around Next’s own employment practices, with some shareholders calling on the firm to adopt the “real” living wage for its workers.
Next employs 49,181 people – according to its latest accounts – down from 50,945 people in the year prior.
The retail boss rejected suggestions that he is prioritising the firm’s shareholders over its employees.
“When people talk about a company making a billion pounds, they assume that that’s somehow a person with a billion pounds in their pocket and they must be very, very rich.
“But the nature of public companies is that we are owned by hundreds of thousands of savers whose savings are often very modest,” he said.