BP is ditching paid rest breaks and most bank holiday bonuses for 5,400 workers in its petrol forecourts as it attempts to offset a planned rise in the independent living wage.
The company has told workers in its 310 company-run forecourts that it will be changing their benefits in February. Workers at a further 850 BP-branded forecourts run by partners are on different pay deals.
BP is an accredited member of the Living Wage Foundation’s fair pay scheme, under which employers commit to pay staff an annually set wage to meet living costs.
Hourly pay for BP’s affected workers will rise to a minimum of £13.45 in February, from £12.60 this year – a 6.7% rise in line with the scheme. However, one worker said the company’s changes to employee benefits would reduced take-home pay by at least 6.25%, wiping out much of the hourly rise. BP disputed the percentage figure but did not provide its own calculation.
At present, most BP workers receive 1.5 times their usual hourly pay for working on bank holidays and are paid for one 20-minute break in a shift of four to six hours or a 30-minute break if their shift is more than six hours.
According to the Guardian’s calculations, that would mean that someone working an eight-hour shift, including a 30-minute break, will receive £100.87 under the new pay regime, compared with £100.80 now.
Expressing annoyance at the measures, one source said BP had summoned managers to its Sunbury base to tell them about the change to benefits.
The source claimed BP was “framing the announced increase to the real living wage, which they are committed to implementing as part of their role as a real living wage employer, as a new benefit they are going to offer instead [of paid breaks and bank holiday premiums], when in reality they were committed to implementing this increase as they have done every year since they signed up in 2020”.
The source suggested the benefits were “written into customer service assistants’ contracts”, and workers could be “encouraged to agree to the changes without fully understanding their rights to disagree and without being offered any compensation or incentive to consent to the changes”.
Under UK employment law, workers have the right to one uninterrupted 20-minute rest break during their working day if they work more than six hours a day. However, the government does not mandate that a worker should be paid during this break.
Many retailers, including Asda, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s, have cut paid breaks in recent years as a way to offset increases in the legal minimum wage, employers’ national insurance and other labour costs.
BP confirmed it was making the changes to benefits.
A spokesperson said: “We regularly review our pay and benefits to stay fair and competitive, including benchmarking with the rest of the UK retail industry. As a result, early next year we will be adjusting how we structure pay for hourly paid colleagues working in our 310 company-owned retail stores across the UK.
“From February, we will no longer pay for rest breaks and pay premium rates on fewer national bank holidays. However, we will be increasing our base hourly pay and, to help support colleagues, we will bring in this annual increase two months earlier than usual, also in early February 2026.”
Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, said: “Workers are still suffering a severe cost of living hangover from 14 years of Tory government. This would be the worst possible time for BP to cut benefits and impose a stealth pay reduction.
“In the future, the employment rights bill will provide important new protections to prevent employers from imposing contractual changes to workers’ pay.”
