Pizza Express, stop thieving staff tips!

To: Richard Hodgson, CEO Pizza Express

2,969
of 3,000 signatures

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Pizza Express is cheating staff of their fair tips. The 8% ‘admin fee’ it deducts from credit card tips should be scrapped with 100% of tips going to staff– no deductions, no excuses.

Why is this important?

Pizza Express rightly prides itself on bringing great pizza to Britain – 50 years ago this year. Today, with over 400 restaurants across the UK, business is booming.

We think you’ll agree that one of the keys to your success is your staff –friendly and hardworking they deserve to be treated with respect.

But many are questioning why Pizza Express is taking a slice of their tips. Most Pizza Express staff are paid the national minimum wage of £6.50 p/h – barely enough to survive on. They are heavily reliant on tips simply to make ends meet.

It’s why we are urging Pizza Express to scrap the 8% ‘admin fee’ it deducts from customer credit card tips simply to process them through the payroll. You claim not to profit from the fee, but our Pizza Express members estimate that the company could be pocketing a cool £1 million. It can’t cost that much to transfer credit card tips into workers’ pay packets.

We say that the only fair tips policy is one where 100% of customer tips go to the staff with no deductions by the employer. And the public agrees; backed up by two recent newspaper polls. In the Metro 92% of respondents said that 100% of tips should go to staff, in the Daily Telegraph 85% agreed.

There can be no excuses for your unfair tips policy. Very few of Pizza Express’ high street rivals charge a fee for processing credit card tips. The Restaurant Group, owners of Chiquito and Garfunkels, dropped its 10% ‘admin charge’ a few years ago. If they can do it, why can’t Pizza Express?

Act today to scrap the 8% admin fee on credit card tips. With Pizza Express celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, there really is no better time to show your staff you care. Until you do we will continue to call on customers to tip in cash.

Hat tip Going to Work

The Evil Ones - 1 down 4 to go: Bench, Bank Fashion, Republic and Mexx.

On Tuesday I posted here on the campaign by the TUC "Going to Work" website about handing in letters of protest on Saturday (tomorrow) to branches of Peacocks about the refusal of their parent company, Edinburgh Woollen Mill to sign the Bangladesh Fire and Building safety Accord.

This Accord is trying to stop the senseless slaughter of garment workers in Bangladesh. See here, here and here.

West Ham Labour Party TULO had agreed on Tuesday that trade union activists will hand in letters of protest to Stratford and Green Street Peacock stores before and after Labour canvassing sessions.

Great news! We have now been told that after months of refusing EWM have now signed the Accord!!!! So the protest tomorrow is called off although we are still pressing EWM to pay compensation for workers injured in the horrific Tazreen factory fire.

The pressure will now be on the 4 "evil ones" retail stores "Bench, Bank Fashion, Republic and Mexx" who are still refusing to sign the Accord. I hope that "Going to work" will be asking us to do similar stuff with this irresponsible mob in the near future.

(hat tip picture Banksy)

Pay 2p extra per teeshirt to save workers lives

Check out the TUC website Going to Work and the campaign it is running with LabourStart to make Garment factories in Bangladesh safe.

They point out that the people responsible for poverty wages and very poor safety standards are not consumers in the UK looking for bargain clothes but the global brands and retailers who set prices and therefore wage rates and safety standards.

If the £27 per month wages of these workers were to be doubled this would only cost an extra 2p per tee shirt sold in the UK. They would then not be so desperate for work regardless of conditions. Effective health and safety at work would cost even less. Especially if free trade unions were allowed in Bangladesh who could drive up safety standards.

All pension fund trustees should be scrutinising their fund managers about what they are doing to make sure that any investments they hold in any part of the garment supply chain (not just factories and shops but also finance, raw materials, construction, design, transport and insurances) act responsibly and make sure all workers are properly paid and safe. This is not just a matter affecting Bangladesh.

We have factories making Apple iPADS in China who treat their workers so badly that they have to put up suicide nets around high buildings.

Trustees own these assets on behalf of their beneficiaries and must take personal responsibility for what is done in their name and on their behalf. It is also a given in my book that investments in well managed companies that to not allow their supply chain workforce to be killed, do not employ child labour, do not bribe local officials nor destroy the environment - will produce superior long term returns for the pension fund.