Britain'S Minimum Living Wage Will Go Up, Or British Retailers Will Use Robotics Instead Of Labor.

Britain will raise the minimum wage standard next month, although it looks good for the bottom workers, but because of the increase in labor costs, retailers will have to lay off workers. Some workers will benefit from it, but they will have to suffer from the negative effects of inflation, while others will obviously lose their jobs and fall into the abyss.

From next month, the minimum wage in the UK will be raised to 7.5 pounds, up 12% from 2015.

It is the industry most affected by this policy.

According to the report issued by the British Retail Association of British Retail Consortium (BRC) in 2016, there are about 3 million practitioners in the British retail industry, of whom 1 million 700 thousand of the employees' wages linger on the "lowest line".

Since the financial crisis, the total number of British Retail practitioners has been declining due to the weakness of retail industry, the continuous rise in labor and rental costs, and the competition between automation and electricity industry. The Association says that 1 million of the retail industry will lose their jobs in the future.

According to the world clothing and shoe net, as the largest private employer in the UK, the annual cost of Tesco PLC (TSCO:L) Tesco, which is 4 billion pounds per person, will be eroded by the British market if it increases by 12%.

According to the world clothing and shoe net, as of the 2016 fiscal year ended February 27, 2016, Tesco PLC Tesco business profit recorded 944 million pounds, a slight increase of 1.1%, of which the British market operating profit recorded a 1.4% increase and 0.6% actual growth to 505 million pounds.

Britain's largest

Next PLC, a retailer, warned of profits in the next two years.

In addition to the rise in labor costs, British retailers are also facing the negative effects of rising imports of sterling, while British apparel retailer Next PLC (NXT.L) and fast moving giant Unilever PLC (ULVR.L) (UNc.AS) Unilever have been raising prices.

As the most profitable clothing retailer in the UK, Next PLC has recently called for urgency. When the Christmas holiday season was released in January, the company lowered its sales and profit expectations in the 2016/17 financial year, and repeatedly indicated that the prospect was difficult, especially because the impact of the pound's depreciation on prices began to emerge.

Next PLC now expects year-on-year sales as of the end of January 2017 to decline by 1%, compared with a 1.75% decline of 1.25% and a pre tax profit forecast of 4.4% to 0.5% over the previous year, down 3.6%, or 821 million 300 thousand pounds from the 2015/16 financial year, to a median of 805 million pounds.

As for Unilever PLC Unilever, it is also a "pressure mountain". Its price raising strategy has not only been resisted by Tesco PLC Tesco, but now the pressure from investors is forcing the company to divestiture 6 billion of the food business, because the The Kraft Heinz Company (NYSE:KHC) Kaf Henry S has quoted a price of $143 billion, hoping to buy the British / Dutch group, but was refused by the Unilever PLC Unilever.

This led to dissatisfaction with shareholders seeking investment returns, so Unilever PLC Unilever hopes to placate investors by selling part of its business, streamlining costs and repurchasing shares.

In the past two years, the British retail market has been howling. Despite the devaluation of the European Union referendum, the pound's depreciation has stimulated a large number of tourists to enter consumption, but few retailers really benefit, because British retailers are mostly high street brands, the only large ones.

The retailer is Burberry Group PLC (BRBY.L) bobury group.

In 2016, Britain's two largest retail companies, BHS Group Ltd. and Austin Reed Group Ltd., went bankrupt, causing more than 12000 people to lose their jobs. The huge pension deficit of BHS involved 20000 people and became a British "public case" until recently.

Philip Green Green, former boss of BHS, managed to earn at least 580 million pounds of dividends and other rights from the department store during the 15 years of controlling the department store. In order to avoid a penalty of up to 1 billion pounds, Philip Green finally reconciled with the pension authority The Pensions Regulator, the British pension protection fund Pension Protection Fund three party at the end of February, and was willing to pay 363 million pounds for the one-time payment of the pension deficit in February.

However, recently, the British media reported that the above funds benefited the most from former BHS executives, causing a great stir in the UK again.

The performance of John Lewis Partnership PLC, the parent company of John Lewis, the largest chain store in the United Kingdom, also significantly reduced the dividend payout ratio to the employees of the partnership system. The bonus at the end of the year was only 6% of the salary, which is the 63 year low of the 4% ratio since 1954. The proportion was 10% last year. This is also the group's reduction in the percentage of employees' dividends for fourth years in a row.

Prior to that, the group also announced 773 layoffs, but another 386 jobs could be created, that is, a net layoff of 387 people.

Including Tesco PLC Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsbury 's, and Asda four big supermarket giants have been adhering to the streamlining strategy in the UK market, and layoffs are inevitable.

With regard to the new wage standards to be enforced, there is a high voice from the anonymous retailers who have recently implemented layoffs, claiming that, from a personal point of view, of course, employees' company standards have been promoted. However, the government's current policy will lead to unexpected results (a large increase in the unemployment rate of workers), because with the popularization and efficiency of automation, the cost performance of workers will not be as good as that of robots.

At the end of January this year, a British agency released the report on the "1 million unemployed" again, which issued the Fabian Society for the working class.

The report indicates that British retailers are increasing outsourcing to lower cost countries, while using robotics instead of labor.

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