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Tesco says all delivery drivers working out of its Livingston site have signed up to move to a new depot after three days of strike action by staff. A fourth day of action scheduled for June 5 was called off after the TGWU section of trade union Unite agreed to meet with the supermarket this week. Tesco maintains the meeting was “for further consultation” with the union only and was not for negotiating the way it intends to pay its staff when  it moves to a new depot situated nearby.

A Tesco spokesman says its hope now is to move forward; but question marks remain over plans to push forward with de-recognition, particularly after its increasingly bitter announcements about the union during the dispute. The spokesman says: “All the drivers have now signed up. There shouldn’t have been strikes in the first place; it was completely unnecessary and completely pointless. Tesco’s position hasn’t changed; no-one is going to lose any contractual earnings.”

When MT contacted Unite it said it was unaware that the drivers had agreed to Tesco’s contractual changes. A spokesman says: “Genuinely, if a company in the middle of an industrial dispute becoming very bitter offers to meet it would be churlish to refuse that offer. We take it at face value. “We have an industrial action mandate,” he adds. “It doesn’t need to be balloted on again. It’s only called off while talks go ahead. Clearly we have to see what Tesco say on  Wednesday and take a view on that.”