Lidl set to become the UK’s highest-paid supermarket

Lidl has announced pay rises for new shop floor workers from March next year. The supermarket said minimum pay will rise from £9.50 to £10.10 an hour. In London, pay will increase from £10.85 to £11.30. Longer serving staff will also see a pay rise to £11.40, and for those inside London, it will rise to £12.25. The discount grocer said the move represents a pay rise of more than 6% for some people and that about 80% - more than 21,000 Lidl employees - will benefit. The UK’s minimum wage for workers over 23 is set to rise from £8.91 to £9.50 in April 2022. Staff members at Lidl, who are over 23, will see a benefit from 60p more than the National Living Wage. What Lidl said in a statement Lidl claimed the pay increase will make them the highest-paying supermarket, adding this was in recognition of the hard work from the staff during the pandemic. “At Lidl, our frontline colleagues are the backbone of our business,” Lidl chief executive, Christian Härtnagel said. “They have worked tirelessly over the past 18 months of the Covid-19 crisis and are integral to our future success. “We have ambitious plans to grow our business across Great Britain, and to do that we need to ensure we attract and look after the best talent at every level of our business. “This year we feel incredibly lucky to be in a position as a business to go even further by making this significant investment in our incredible workforce, which will make us the best-paying supermarket in the UK.” Lidl bosses said the extra £18 million spent by the business on new wages equates to £50 million invested on hourly wages over the past five years. A version of this article originally appeared on NationalWorld.com