{"id":300880,"date":"2025-12-05T18:37:04","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T18:37:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/300880\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T18:37:04","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T18:37:04","slug":"tesco-to-face-e3-5m-bill-for-staff-signing-up-to-auto-enrolment-pension-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/300880\/","title":{"rendered":"Tesco to face \u20ac3.5m bill for staff signing up to auto-enrolment pension \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Signing staff up to the new <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/auto-enrolment\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/auto-enrolment\/\">mandatory workplace pension scheme<\/a> will cost <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/tesco\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/tesco\/\">Tesco<\/a> \u20ac3.5 million, next year, the supermarket chain has said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Tesco says that more than 4,000 of its staff will be signed up to the Government\u2019s My Future Fund under auto-enrolment. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">From January, the company will pay 1.5 per cent of those workers\u2019 gross wages into the new pension scheme. The workers themselves will pay the same amount \u2013 around \u20ac800 per person over the course of the year. The Government will chip in with \u20ac1 for every \u20ac3 invested by the workers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Tesco already runs an in house occupational pension scheme for staff under which the retailer will match employee contributions up to 7.5 per cent of base salary. That plan is more generous if employees avail of maximum contributions from the company, especially those who are paying income tax at 40 per cent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Tesco said 4,500 of its 13,500 permanent staff are members of that in-house scheme, which allows workers to continue to work and contribute up to the age of 70 if they choose to do so.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Tesco says its occupational scheme is open to all employees from the day they join the company, regardless of how many hours they work.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" class=\"c-image audio_image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1754647931518-c07d65db-55b5-463e-ae51-976300c5837e.jpeg\"\/>Will the Government\u2019s new plan speed up the delivery of vital infrastructure projects? <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Up to 4,000 other staff will be covered by neither scheme, either because they have chosen not to sign up to the in-house fund or they do not meet the criteria to be compulsory enrolled in the new State scheme because they are younger than 23, older than 60 or earning less than \u20ac20,000 a year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It is open to member of this last group to ask the company to enrol them in My Future Fund voluntarily so that they have the benefit of some private pension coverage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Separately, the retailer has announced plans for a 3 per cent rise in pay for all staff who are paid by the hour at its 188 stores across the State or work in distribution. That will bring the supermarket\u2019s average hourly rate of pay to \u20ac18.13, it said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Tesco said that auto-enrolment and the pay increase would cost them a total of over \u20ac15 million in 2026.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Trade union Mandate said it was disappointed that Tesco had ignored the union\u2019s request for it to engage in collective bargaining, choosing instead to announce a unilateral pay award.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cMandate had sought a pay increase in keeping with Ictu\u2019s (Irish Congress of Trade Unions) private sector committee\u2019s pay recommendation of between 4 per cent and 7 per cent for 2026 but Tesco\u2019s pay award has fallen in real terms as our members have to contend with increased inflation, food inflation and a cost-of-living crisis, assistant general secretary Jim Fuery said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">He noted the Irish operation of Tesco was making profits of \u20ac185.3 million, equating to over a half a million-euro profit per day, up by a third of last year\u2019s figures. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Signing staff up to the new mandatory workplace pension scheme will cost Tesco \u20ac3.5 million, next year, the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[6998,84,4176,120919,5107,4174,4175,723,56,54,55,1908],"class_list":{"0":"post-300880","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-auto-enrolment","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-finance","11":"tag-mandate","12":"tag-pension","13":"tag-personal-finance","14":"tag-personalfinance","15":"tag-tesco","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-unitedkingdom","19":"tag-work"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}