Tesco staff face the axe as boss David Lewis seeks to wow the City

The CEO took action to restore relationships with customers and staff when he joined and it worked, reawakening the sleeping giant and reviving sales. Now he's putting that at risk

Tesco staff must be finding it tough to smile at customers this morning.

Weekend reports suggested 15,000 of them could lose their jobs at the UK’s biggest supermarket chain.

The company initially reacted by slamming down the shutters, before later saying that the plans were being “finalised” and that it would “bring forward” efforts to communicate them to employees.

As to when that might happen, who knows or dares to dream. “Our priority is to support our colleagues throughout,” said a memo to staff from chief operating officer Tony Hogett.

He has a strange way of showing that. It’s notable that Tesco’s priorities did not include offering any clarification to the shopworkers union, at least not as of this morning.

The company seems to be adopting the Theresa May approach to dealing with Usdaw: Ignoring it until very late in the day. Following the example of the worst PM in British political history is not a clever thing to be doing. Perhaps someone might like to communicate that to Tesco CEO David Lewis.

He has been walking on water almost since he arrived to sort out the mess Philip Clarke had left behind him.

This rather counts as his first banana skin. And it’s a big one.

But what of those plans? According to the reports they involve swinging the axe when it comes to the grocer’s fresh food counters; the in store butchers, bakers, and fish mongers.

These are expensive to staff and maintain when you could just put the stuff on the shelves. But customers seem to like them.

Restoring the relationship with them, and improving the service they received, was one of Lewis’s early priorities and successes. It helped him to reawaken the sleeping giant, and revive it as a force to be reckoned with. It is something that has been repeatedly demonstrated in the sales figures Tesco issues.

The trouble is Lewis hasn’t yet managed to produce the sort of profits that has them going ‘yowza’ in the City.

This plan, whenever it finally emerges, is presumably aimed at doing that.

Lewis seems willing to risk annoying his customers while casting his staff in the role of sacrificial lambs so he and his executive team can feast with the bonus boys in the City.

It’s not a good look.

It is something the Tesco alums now running Morrisons should take note of. Their Market Street initiative is all about fresh food, delivered to counters from farms that the grocer uniquely owns.

Now might be a very good time for Morrisons boss David Potts to get in touch with his advertising people with a view to giving it a renewed push so Tesco customers know that there’s a place where they can still find the fresh food counters they like.