One more (to) bite the dust.

The owner of John Lewis and Waitrose is understood to be consulting on plans to cut 11,000 jobs as part of a major turnaround.

The retail chain, which last March warned of job cuts to lower costs across the business, is reportedly in talks to cut its 76,000 strong workforce by at least 10pc over the next five years.

The number of roles is expected to be reduced slowly through redundancies and by not replacing staff who leave, sources told the Guardian.

The partnership has already raised about £260m to fund its turnaround by taking on new bank debt and by selling and leasing back 11 Waitrose stores, the Times reported separately. The job cuts are expected to mainly hit John Lewis and head office, sources have said.

The news of the job cuts comes days after staff were informed John Lewis was halving redundancy payouts in order to make layoffs cheaper.

John Lewis offers “partnership redundancy pay” on top of statutory redundancy pay which is set by the Government.

From 1 February redundancy pay will be slashed to one week’s pay per year of service down from two.

In an internal memo, the John Lewis Partnership said: “Against all of our competing priorities for investment, it’s fair to say that the high cost of redundancy pay has been one of the things that’s prevented us from moving as quickly as we’ve wanted to transform ourselves for the future, and has restricted our ability to invest more in pay.”

It added that it needed to “free up cash” with a “more affordable” policy.

The John Lewis Partnership is battling to stage a turnaround after years of underperformance.

John Lewis warned in March last year of job cuts in order to lower costs across the business, with Dame Sharon White, chairman of the John Lewis Partnership, saying inflation had hit the business “like a hurricane”. John Lewis posted a loss of £59m in the first half of 2023.

Pay is one of John Lewis’s biggest costs, with the partnership spending £1.8bn on staff in its last full year while revenues were £10.5bn.

A spokesman for the John Lewis Partnership said the measures are part of plans to return the business to profit and increase efficiency.

A statement said: “The John Lewis Partnership has a plan to return to profit, which involves investing heavily to enhance our customer offer, technology, stores and becoming more efficient. This is working and performance is improving, but as we have already announced, that sadly means reducing the number of Partners we need in our business. It would be inappropriate to discuss details and our Partners will be the first to know about any changes.”

This isn't news. It has been heavily discussed & reported in the media from the start of last year,

Also, I doubt the vast majority will even be redundancies. Nearly all the job losses would be from natural wastage. The only ones who will cling on to their jobs to the last moment will be the overpaid managers that think they are doing an excellent job working 6 hours spread over a full working week.

In the past week my local Waitrose has replaced all but two checkouts with self-service tills. I suppose inevitable as all the major supermarkets are going that way and cutting staff numbers in the process.