Thursday newspaper round-up: Furlough, Pret a Manger, PwC

(Sharecast News) - The TUC is urging the government to abandon plans to scrap the furlough scheme at the end of next month and instead build on the wage subsidy experiment to create a permanent short-time working scheme. Plans drawn up by the TUC would protect workers against recessions, a new wave of the pandemic or the transition to a green economy by having 80% of their wages guaranteed by the state. - Guardian 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. - Guardian

Travel Covid test costs should be capped at £40, MPs have told the Government amid a growing Tory backlash against the charges. Senior Conservative MPs are calling on Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, to take immediate action to end "rip-off" prices of PCR tests that still average £75 per person and risk turning foreign holidays into the "preserve only of the wealthy". - Telegraph

The boss of PwC has said employers have a responsibility to get their staff back into offices as the professional services firm reported a record annual profit of almost £1.2 billion during a year in which its employees have mostly been working from home. Kevin Ellis, chairman of PwC in Britain, where the company employs 22,000 people, said: "There's an economic need for me to encourage my people to work from the office for two or three days a week. - The Times

Regions in Britain with a flourishing tourism industry have already regained the losses their labour market suffered from the Covid-19 crisis, but big cities including London are still struggling, a new report suggests. Although the jobs market has been resilient to the economic downturn thanks in part to large fiscal support, some parts of the country have suffered more acutely than others. The Resolution Foundation think tank said that areas with high average salaries, typically in London, had been at the sharp end of the downturn. - The Times