Fresh clash over Sunday trading
A NEW battle has broken out over Sunday supermarket trading, with Safeway joining rival Sainsbury's in calling on the Government to let them stay open longer than the current six-hour limit.
They said the move would be hugely popular with customers and would prevent repeats of the chaos in the run-up to Christmas, when 23 December fell on a Sunday and stores were inundated with last-minute shoppers.
But religious campaigners and trade unions reacted angrily, saying longer opening hours would hit workers and their families. And the supermarkets' rivals, Tesco, Asda and Waitrose, all said they had little interest in longer Sunday hours.
Shops in England and Wales with over 3,000 square feet of floor space can open for only six hours on Sunday and not before 10am.
Safeway communications director Kevin Hawkins, who lobbied for the law change in 1994 which lifted the total ban on Sunday supermarket trading, said the Government should consider three options. These were allowing all shops to open for as long as they want, letting them open for up to three hours longer at their own discretion, or keeping the six-hour rule but letting them decide when that six hours should begin.
He conceded that complete deregulation - needed to allow unlimited Sunday opening - would probably require too much time in Parliament to be passed by the present Government. But he said the other changes were possible because they could be introduced by amending current legislation.
Barry Allen, of USDAW, which has 100,000 members at Tesco and more than 30,000 at Sainsbury's, said: 'We are directly opposed to it. We feel an extension of working hours would probably involve some element of forcing people to work on a Sunday because these firms would find it difficult getting sufficient people to staff their stores. He said the six-hour limit had been a compromise between those for and against Sunday opening and warned: 'Give the retail industry an inch and they try to take a mile.'
John Alexander, of the Keep Sunday Special Campaign, said: 'We would oppose any extension violently because we have cupboards of evidence of people who have been very badly treated since the act was passed. Shop workers and their families are already under enormous pressure at Christmas.
'Nine million people are working on Sundays now, and that means nine million families have no parent or only one parent with them on that day. Families need a day off together.'
A spokesman for Asda said the firm was happy with only six hours' opening on Sundays because a survey had shown three out of five customers were content with this. Waitrose said: 'We are content with the current arrangements', while Tesco, the market leader, said: 'We are very happy to trade for the six hours we are legally allowed to trade for.'
