Pret a Manger staff are considering strike action after the coffee shop chain told them it was permanently cutting pay despite the easing of trading restrictions. The workers, the vast majority of whom earn basic pay of the legal minimum £8.91 an hour, were told they would temporarily not be paid for breaks and a service bonus would be ditched in July last year after the pandemic hit. Pret has now told workers that the cut to pay for breaks is permanent. The service bonus, linked to performance judged by a mystery shopper, was reintroduced in April this year at 50p an hour, down from £1 before the pandemic hit. Workers have been told that change is also permanent. The combined changes for a worker on an eight-hour shift, including a legally required half-hour break, who regularly gets a mystery shopper bonus amount to an 11% pay cut per shift versus pre-pandemic levels. One worker told the Guardian they had been moved to organise a strike next month as pay was becoming worse just as the work was becoming harder, partly as a result of a subscription service introduced a year ago that enables members to get up to five coffees a day for a monthly £20 fee. “I [have] always been working in hospitality but changed to Pret because they used to give better conditions for their employees. “With the coffee subscription we have more work. More effort. More stress. People never stop going for free coffee. But our conditions as employees are going back instead … Now there is not any difference to work between a Pret a Manger and [another coffee shop]. I love my job but we want our conditions to improve or be at least as before.” Pret told the Guardian it was having to keep down pay after the pandemic had “a big impact on our business”. The company ditched its dividend payment to shareholders and in April warned of “material uncertainties” over whether it can continue as a going concern as its city centre outlets suffered from the absence of commuters and tourists. The group permanently closed 74 outlets in the UK last year and 22 in the US, while shareholders pumped in £185m of additional funding into the company in February and put a further £100m on standby in March to help keep it afloat. A Pret spokesperson said: “The business is still trading significantly below pre-pandemic levels, but we continue to review our benefits. This is in no way a reflection of the hard work of our teams, and we’re incredibly grateful for their dedication and commitment. It’s important to us that we always communicate openly and honestly with our team members, which we’ll continue to do over the coming months.” Ian Hodson, national president of the Bakers Food and Allied Workers Union, said: “We call on Pret to think again. We can no longer sit back and allow these companies to boost their profits from workers wages. It’s awful to read that workers are facing even worse conditions as we try and get the economy back on track. “After the pandemic we are seeing a return to bad business as usual and working people cannot and should not accept that any more. We all deserve a better deal and we will support the workers at Pret if the strike goes ahead.”