Post-election: Taking the Next step

Many businesses have welcomed the election result. Next, whose CEO Lord Wolfson is a Tory peer, has done more - it's taken advantage of it.

Next has just announced that the 800 staff entitled to extra pay for Sunday working (staff who joined the firm before 2008) will lose that right. Those that won't give it up may be fired. A Next spokesman said "Working on a Sunday ... has become a new normal – so Next feels it is no longer justifiable to pay some of its staff up to 50% more" for Sunday work.

Mark Hix, GMB’s national officer for retail workers, responded: "Next claim that they consider Sunday to be a normal working day. ... There can hardly be a better example of a company that has a total disregard for family life."

This disregard for family life, indeed for anything other than pounds and pence, is now so common as to go unnoticed. But its wrong. It should always be challenged.