COVID-19: Marks & Spencer (M&S) will serve notice about hundreds of job cuts this week

The cuts this week will be part of plans to cut several thousand people from M&S 'workforce.

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, Marks & Spencer (M&S) will serve notice this week of imminent plans for hundreds of job cuts as it becomes the latest prominent retailer to restructure its staff.

Within days, M&S will start announcing redundancy plans, joining the likes of the John Lewis Partnership, Boots and Debenhams in what has quickly become a bloodbath on the high streets of Britain.

Sources said several thousand jobs were expected to be lost as chief executive Steve Rowe is accelerating ongoing business restructuring in the coming months.

They are part of a plan which was dubbed 'Never the same again' by the company at its results two months ago.

M&S will confirm the first substantive cuts to its workforce in the initial phase to be announced this week, since the COVID-19 crisis forced the temporary closure of most of its shops in March.

It will make the latest chain the UK's most famous retailer to have taken money from taxpayers through the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme, only to announce significant numbers of redundancies later on.

27,000 M&S employees - out of a total of 78,000 - were furloughed under the government's programme to discourage companies from laying off workers.

Thousands of them have returned to work, although the company has not provided a precise number.

M&S has also yet to indicate whether, like rival Primark, it will reject the chancellor's recent offer of a £1,000 bonus for every furloughed employee who resumes working.

According to analysts, the disclosure of permanent job cuts-even if they are not the same workers as those who have been furloughed-will make it extremely difficult for the board of M&S to accept the bonus payments from the Treasury.

Also Read: COVID-19: Trump says he'll be right that coronavirus will eventually disappear

Over the last four months, leading companies have cut hundreds of thousands of jobs across the economy, with notable examples including British Airways, BP, Royal Mail and the Upper Crust-owner SSP Group.

As part of a review indicated in May, the heads of individual business units-including retail and property, clothing and home, food and international-are all looking at their cost bases.

Those who announce job cuts will reveal their plans in the coming months at different points, with the total amounting to several thousand, according to people close to the plans.

Separately, M&S announced plans to close between 110 and 120 of its full-line clothing stores in 2018, of which more than half have now been shut down.

In announcing annual results in May, Mr. Rowe said: "While some customer habits will return to normal, others have forever changed, the trend toward digital has accelerated, and changes in the shape of the high street have brought forward.

"Working habits were most importantly transformed and we have discovered that we can work in a faster, leaner, more effective way. I 'm determined to act now to capture that and deliver a renewed, more agile business in a world that never again will be the same.

The company said on the same day that "central support costs and headcount will be examined at all levels," while £1bn in cash and cost-saving actions would be associated with "other changes, including a more streamlined support centre, changes in leadership structure and negotiations with landlords on lease contract terms."

  

At its annual meeting earlier this month, Chairman Archie Norman asked shareholders at the beginning and end of the summit to vote remotely on their confidence in the company's future, and saw a slight increase in optimism by the time it finished.

The chief of M&S agreed to a pay freeze and then confirmed that he would not take an annual bonus either for the last year or this financial year.

One ally pointed out that his take-home pay had been reduced because, over the next three years, he agreed to reduce his cash pension supplement to zero without any alternative or additional compensation.

An M&S spokesperson on Sunday evening said of the proposed job losses: "We're not commenting on speculation, and if and when we have an announcement to make, our colleagues will be the first to know."