Today, the newly-expanded Sainsbury’s opens in Newport. VentnorBlog has learnt something unfortunately that takes the edge off the happiness.
We’ve learnt that Sainsbury’s had shipped in at least fifty 18/19 year olds from other parts of the UK to stack the shelves, somewhat at odds with their ‘Making a positive difference to our community‘ pledge.
Why?
VB asked them, “Why would Sainsbury’s bring in fifty 18-19 year olds, when youth unemployment is so high on the Island?” They chose not to directly reply instead sending a statement: “To ensure our customers receive a consistent high quality shopping experience in our stores, a specialist team works with in-store colleagues to replenish and dress the shelves for all store openings.”
Speaking to them on the phone they said they wanted each of their stores looking the same, so have teams that travel from shop to shop.
Islanders capable
We pointed out to them that with a little training and some light management, young Islanders would have been more than able to fill the shelves to the shop’s wishes. It’s highly likely that this would also apply to each shop that Sainsbury’s opens.
As well as paying the 50+ youngsters for their time, Sainsbury’s also went to the expense of paying for their travel to the Island, put them up in hotels, and provided them food.
Other questions unanswered
VB put a series of questions to Sainsbury’s such as how much extra did it cost them extra to transport/accommodation each of the people for they stay and how many of these jobs were offered through IW Job Centre, but they didn’t answer them in detail, instead sending us this statement:
“Our newly extended Newport store has employed an additional 100 people from the Island to work in various roles in-store, of which approximately 50% are between the ages of 16 – 25. This is in addition to the 386 colleagues already working in-store.”
