Morrisons intends to make thousands of its staff permanent

Bradford-headquartered supermarket chain Morrisons is to make thousands of temporary staff permanent.

This comes in response to a continued surge in demand for online deliveries, fuelled by the coronavirus pandemic.

The supermarket is expected to officially announce the move on Thursday – 10 September – when it publishes its interim results.

Morrisons, which is the UK’s fourth-biggest supermarket, had about 97,000 workers before the pandemic but hired 45,000 extra temporary staff during the coronavirus crisis.

According to the BBC today, about 25,000 of those staff are still working for the supermarket, and more than 6,000 have already been given permanent jobs.

A spokesman for the supermarket said: “Morrisons has been playing its full part in feeding the nation and that has required the largest recruitment drive our company has ever seen.”

Out of those 25,000 extra staff, Morrisons is using 9,000 to pick and deliver in order to deal with the massive growth in online demand.

As well as its own delivery service, Morrisons also partners Amazon and Deliveroo, and recently confirmed that customers could do a full Morrisons food shop via Amazon UK.

Additional staff have also been required in Morrisons supermarkets to make sure they conform to coronavirus safety guidelines.