Says Mr Tesco:
Leahy will also say that the UK's largest private sector employer has created 260,000 jobs in the past decade, half of them in Britain. That equates to a new job every 20 minutes.
Hmmm. Tesco employ 260,000 people in Britain, and according to this article staff turnover is around 30% per annum. Either the chain has expanded so as to double its staff roster over the past ten years or vacancies caused by churn are being counted as “created” jobs. The last sounds more likely. It’s a bogof! Lose one disgruntled shelf stacker, get a created job free.
Although official data show food prices climbing rapidly in Britain, Tesco said last month that overall inflation in its stores was running at just 0.8%. Prices of non-food goods - from fashion to electricals - were still declining and while food prices were higher, the increase over the past three months was less than it had been over the same period last year, it said.
Nice bit of cherry picking. How did the increase over the past three months compare with the three months before that, say? And what kind of figures are we talking?
"Supermarkets have become a lever of social change, a source of social mobility. Not just in giving people more choice in what they buy, but in providing more jobs," he will say.
Ah, choice. Choicy choicy choice. It is, of course, bollocks – or at best trivially true. We go to Tesco because it has all the stuff we need in one place and because the opportunity costs in trying to get this stuff elsewhere are prohibitive. In other words, because in practical terms exercising choice isn’t viable. The purpose of Tesco is to make choice irrelevant except at the margins – unless the choice of several brands of washing up liquid isn’t marginal to you or unless you actually believe that there is a meaningful choice between buying food, washing up liquid and toilet roll. It ain’t so. There’s a primal unity here.
Come to think of it, the Tesco model challenges the whole ideology of choice. Let’s extrapolate for a minute. Let’s say you’ve got a gripe against the moloch of retailing, and you’re determined not to see any of your money end up there. In many places in Britain you won’t be able to do that, because part of the money you pay the taxi driver, the dentist, the plumber and so on will find its way back to Tesco when they shop there. The point about market dominance in mass retailing is that it enables you to effectively levy a form of taxation – and without representation at that.
Let’s extrapolate even more. It’s not quite right to say that you spend your money in Tesco. It’s more accurate to say that all that money is really theirs. The name of the game is to find as many ways as possible to get it back from you. Given Tesco’s constant proliferation in both size and product offering it’s not an exaggeration to say that the only limit they recognize is that set by the entire amount of money in the economy, or at least that section not sequestered by the government. I await the Tesco-Blackwater merger and its attendant exciting range of humanitarian military products with interest.
One of the things that amazes me about Tesco is the sheer amount of agonizing and general sturm und drang about an entity that is really no more than a massive, open ended logistics chain. In many respects, it’s a classic Fordist business, heavily dependent on standardization and with market share the main factor in profitability. It demonstrates that massive, centralized, top down hierarchies can work, provide they pay enough attention to actually expressed public preferences. It’s the profit motive harnessed to the perfection of the Soviet Union. It’s Gosplan that works. And lastly:
The company has quadrupled sales of energy-saving lightbulbs through its promotions and cut plastic bag use by one billion last year through the use of green clubcard points. It is also working with the Carbon Trust to come up with a proper "eco-labelling" scheme, based on the lessons of nutritional labelling."If customers are given more information about products' carbon footprints, I believe their behaviour and choices will change and the supply chain will have to change too."
Very fair point that. It’s much easier to make a difference in terms of climate change if you have an organization with 31% of the retail market to work on and through. How about it, crusties?
UPDATE: get the Beer in. By popular demand.
I await the Tesco-Blackwater merger and its attendant exciting range of humanitarian military products with interest.
Close Air Support now comes in three exciting brands to suit every pocket!
Tesco Gourmet - as advertised by TV's General Wesley Clark, the Jamie Oliver of the Air-Land Battle. Heritage-variety satellite guided munitions are allowed to ripen on the pylon by one of our approved suppliers before being delivered direct to your door. All Gourmet products are guaranteed cruelty free.
Tesco Choice - for the discerning buyer; cluster munitions (soon to be renamed "bouquet munitions") selected by our own buyers from a number of suppliers in the former Soviet Union.
Tesco Value - iron bombs from a surplus B-52, repainted blue and white and flown by a disgruntled nineteen-year-old with an NVQ.
Posted by: ajay | February 05, 2008 at 05:31 PM
They really have doubled their number of UK jobs:
1997: 143,694 UK employees, 89,649 UK FTEs
2007: 270,417 UK employees, 184,461 UK FTEs
Posted by: john b | February 05, 2008 at 07:40 PM
One wonders how many of those jobs they've "created" are employing those previously working in shops that closed down when the new Tesco turned up.
Posted by: septicisle | February 05, 2008 at 08:43 PM
"Tesco Value - iron bombs from a surplus B-52, repainted blue and white and flown by a disgruntled nineteen-year-old with an NVQ."
I have just found a handy shorthand name for the RAF's heavy bomber campaign against the Mau Mau. Thanks Ajay.
Posted by: Chris Williams | February 06, 2008 at 09:19 AM
You've also got an opportunity here to recompense the collateral damage with clubcard points. Oh, what the hell: double clubcard points.
"They really have doubled their number of UK jobs"
Blimey: no wonder the government are so keen on them.
"One wonders how many of those jobs they've "created" are employing those previously working in shops that closed down when the new Tesco turned up."
Quite a few, I suspect. But they're probably working shorter hours for better pay with a pension scheme at the end of it. I think Tesco certainly bears watching, but considerations like these should be put into the analysis more.
Posted by: jamie | February 06, 2008 at 11:13 AM
"But they're probably working shorter hours for better pay with a pension scheme at the end of it."
...not to mention a sizeable annual bonus scheme for all staff.
I always find it a bit weird that people with socialist leanings tend to favour small businesses over big companies, even though small businessmen tend to be worse-paying, more anti-union, more likely to break employment law, and more socially right-wing than big firms. And - per your carbon point - big firms are far more lobbyable into supporting good causes.
Posted by: john b | February 06, 2008 at 12:16 PM
Tesco is unionised, no?
Posted by: Alex | February 06, 2008 at 01:02 PM
I'd rather work at Waitrose than for Tesco's.
Posted by: Chris Williams | February 06, 2008 at 01:19 PM
Full union recognition versus workers co-op: things to be said for both. Incidentally:
...not to mention a sizeable annual bonus scheme for all staff.
Not what I heard from staff - more like discounts on shares and products. People were slightly miffed that everyone was thinking that they'd had large wads of cash handed to them.
Posted by: jamie | February 06, 2008 at 01:28 PM
Bonuses. I was reading that piece John Lanchester wrote in the LRB about the City and his neighbour was talking about taking on graduates for a salary of whatever-it-was K* "plus a guaranteed bonus". Now if it's guaranteed, surely it's not a bonus, is it?
* I have never had a salary measured in K.
Posted by: ejh | February 06, 2008 at 01:56 PM
hmm. dsquared may correct me if he's about, but AIUI the 'guaranteed' element in city bonuses is 'guaranteed if you're not in the bottom 10% who get fired'...
Posted by: john b | February 06, 2008 at 02:35 PM
No, they're actually guaranteed - usually agreed as part of a job move when you don't know if the new place will be a success and don't want to take the risk of getting zero, you agree a minimum level. The City is really a quite congenial place for workers, albeit that one does have to spend the entire day destroying the lives of ordinary people and personally causing mass redundancies, which is definitely what we do all day.
Posted by: dsquared | February 06, 2008 at 05:03 PM
Do you not get lunch?
Posted by: ejh | February 06, 2008 at 05:55 PM
Actually I can't say I've ever liked the City very much, though I've never worked there. Some of the Wren churches (a mate took me on a tour) are superb, though.
Mind you I particularly like the way in which the Ten Commendments behind the altar always says "Thou Shalt Do No Murder" instead of the more familar and all-encompassing rendering. Good of the City to put God right on that one.
Posted by: ejh | February 06, 2008 at 05:58 PM
Hey up
Got to this blog via a google alert: twas a timely find coz I've been ranting about similar things today -
http://www.coveredinbees.org/node/165
I've snaffled from yer blog in this post. Cheers, an ace bit of writing.
Dan
Posted by: Dan | February 08, 2008 at 04:11 PM
Dan's comment above looks like it might actually be spam, but not only is it not, it leads to the ultimate fucking pay dirt - a post about Stafford Beer, second or third coolest guy of the twentieth century.
Posted by: Chris Williams | February 08, 2008 at 06:16 PM
Yes! Stafford Beer! Whoo!
*dances off with his laptop, for a moment half Che, half John Harvey Jones*
Posted by: Alex | February 08, 2008 at 07:19 PM
wow talk about hands across the water - it's like a whole different Jamiesphere on the other side of the world!
Posted by: dsquared | February 09, 2008 at 12:43 AM