UK retailer Tesco restructuring threatens 9,000 jobs

The retailer employs around 300,000 workers in Britain

LONDON: Up to 9,000 jobs are at risk as part of a restructuring programme announced by British supermarket giant Tesco on Monday.

"Overall, we estimate that up to 9,000 Tesco colleague roles could be impacted, however, our expectation is that up to half of these colleagues could be redeployed to other customer-facing roles," the supermarket said in a statement.

The retailer, which employs around 300,000 workers in Britain, told staff on Monday of the changes being made as part of the longer term "turnaround" launched four years ago.

"In our four years of turnaround we've made good progress, but the market is challenging and we need to continually adapt to remain competitive," said Britain and Ireland CEO Jason Tarry.

"This will impact some of our colleagues and our commitment is to minimise this as much as possible and support our colleagues throughout."

The latest job plans concern the supermarket's fish, meat and deli counters in its British stores.

"We expect that around 90 stores will close their counters, with the remaining 700 trading with either a full or flexible counter offer for our customers," it said.

More than 10,000 jobs have been cut at Tesco since chief executive Dave Lewis took charge in 2014 with the brief to save £1.5 billion ($1.9 billion, 1.7 billion euros).

It rebounded into annual net profit last year on strong sales and restructuring following a net loss of £40 million in 2016/2017, when it was hurt by costs arising from an accounting fiasco.

Tesco - the world's third-biggest supermarket chain after France's Carrefour and global leader Wal-Mart of the United States - also has global operations dotted elsewhere including China, India, Ireland, Malaysia, Slovakia and Thailand.

It has been dogged in recent years by an accounting scandal and fierce domestic competition from German discount chains Aldi and Lidl.