Tesco denies it prefers hiring migrants to Britons
In remarks that could drag British retailers into a politically charged immigration debate ahead of a 2015 election, senior Labour lawmaker Chris Bryant was due to say in a speech yesterday that Tesco and Next deliberately excluded British people from jobs.
Tesco, Britain's biggest retailer, has denied an accusation by the opposition Labour Party that it turns away British workers to exploit cheaper migrant labour.
In remarks that could drag British retailers into a politically charged immigration debate ahead of a 2015 election, senior Labour lawmaker Chris Bryant was due to say in a speech yesterday that Tesco and Next deliberately excluded British people from jobs.
Tesco, which employs more than 310,000 people in 3,146 stores across Britain and Northern Ireland, said Bryant's accusations were untrue. Extracts of Bryant's speech were made available to the media ahead of time.
"The statements in relation to Tesco are untrue," Tesco said on Twitter. "We work incredibly hard to recruit from the local area and we have just recruited 350 local people to work in our Dagenham site [in southeast England]."
Bryant was due to say Tesco favoured workers from eastern Europe over British ones and that it relocated one of its distribution centres in a way that discouraged local employees from continuing to continue work for the firm.