Lidl has been awarded numerous top employer awards across many countries. On top of that, this giant discount retailer is well-known for paying top salaries to its staff, and especially in the UK, Lidl pays its workers well above national minimum wage.
Nevertheless, there seem to be some dark clouds on the horizon for the company, since a very large number of its Belgium-based stores have decided to go on strike. Nothing has been mentioned about the level of pay, as the strikes have resulted from a dispute among Lidl and trade unions over the actual working hours offered to employees.
Image originally uploaded by William Murphy on Flickr.com and reused under Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) Creative Commons License
Although labor laws and negotiations between employers and trade unions (with the latter representing the interests of employees) in Belgium are different to those that apply in the UK, the initiation of these strikes indicate that employees value other thinks in the workplace, as well, than just the level of pay.
Offering full-time working hours is essential for a working person to make ends meet.
However, it looks like Lidl’s fixed practice is to offer part-time hours, which seem not to be enough to its Belgian workers.
Another point that should be noted in this situation is that Lidl’s management prefers to be in the “driving seat”, i.e. take initiative and set the rules itself, rather than negotiate with staff.
It looks like Lidl, as an employer, implements a policy within its business model, in the form: “You can either take it, or leave it”. This policy does not only apply to its relationship with its staff, but also with suppliers, etc.