Wilko: Union warns that job losses could be announced on Thursday
Job losses at Wilko could reportedly be announced as soon as Thursday, after an offer to buy the entire 400-strong estate failed to pass “basic checks”, members from the GMB Union have warned.
The union representing thousands of Wilko staff has now said that redundancy talks, which were suspended earlier this week, could be restarted.
It follows a meeting GMB Union had with the high street chain’s administrators PwC, which took place earlier today.
GMB said that PwC was still actively assessing a number of bids, but warned that one bid for the entire business was yet to “pass basic checks”.
“[PwC] also advised that the bid which had been received for the entire business has yet to pass basic checks,” GMB told union members in an update.
It also warned that if extra details required from the bidder were not passed onto PwC by 5pm today then “redundancies which were passed yesterday are likely to be restarted tomorrow”.
GMB Union said the roles likely to be impacted were in its support centre and distribution centre.
“Whilst this does mean that there are bids on the table for a significant proportion of the stores and the online business, we still cannot guarantee the future of any jobs moving forwards at this point,” it added.
There are currently two frontrunners in the race for Wilko, private equity firm M2 Capital and the owner of HMV Doug Putman.
GMB said it will meet with the administrator again tomorrow.
PwC declined to comment.