{"id":11221,"date":"2023-12-15T08:54:13","date_gmt":"2023-12-15T08:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/currys-boss-blasts-government-for-minimum-wage-hike\/"},"modified":"2023-12-15T08:54:13","modified_gmt":"2023-12-15T08:54:13","slug":"currys-boss-blasts-government-for-minimum-wage-hike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/currys-boss-blasts-government-for-minimum-wage-hike\/","title":{"rendered":"Currys boss blasts government for minimum wage hike"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Retail<\/a><\/p>
\n<\/p>\n

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\"Currys\"<\/div>\n

Currys boss Alex Baldock has claimed the government\u2019s minimum wage rise means it does not understand or care about UK retailers.<\/p>\n

The remarks follow Jeremy Hunt revealing plans to raise the legal minimum wage to \u00a311.44 per hour from April 2024, making it almost a 10% hike.<\/p>\n

The news means businesses will pay full-time workers around \u00a31,800 extra per year.<\/p>\n

However, Baldock said the move meant high street retailers like Currys, which are also braced for a business rates rise, face significant pressure.<\/p>\n

The CEO said: \u201cWe believe we are paying our colleagues well and we certainly intend to continue to.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat said, for the retail industry as a whole, having a big hike in the \u2018national living wage\u2019 at the same time as an expected half a billion pound increase in the rates bill just shows how little the government appears to understand or care about this industry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

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He continued: \u201cThere are 3m jobs at stake in UK retail, and loading more costs on to an already overburdened sector is irresponsible, and we call for a change of heart on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The news comes as high street stores will face a collective \u00a31.95bn inflation related local tax rise in 2024.<\/p>\n

Last year, the chancellor capped business rates for companies in retail, leisure and hospitality and implemented a 75% discount worth up to \u00a3110,000 per company, with the discounts due to expire in March 2024.<\/p>\n

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\"Retail<\/a><\/p>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Currys boss Alex Baldock has claimed the government\u2019s minimum wage rise means it does not understand or care about UK retailers. The remarks follow Jeremy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmsretail.com\/RetailNews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}