31/08/2012

Cake Worker's Fly To Dublin To Halt Attacks On Conditions And Pay

Workers from Greencore Cakes and Desserts factory in Hull are taking their fight to Dublin in a bid to stop the company's attacks on workers' pay and conditions.

Greencore, whose biggest customer is Tesco but supply celebration cakes and desserts to all other supermarket giants, has used the threat of redundancy to force workers to accept changes to their contract of work. This means they must now work all hours for basic pay, with all overtime and shift pay abolished and no extra pay for working bank holidays.

A delegation of Unite representatives will be flying out to Dublin to the company’s headquarters in Santry to deliver a giant petition signed by hundreds of workers to Greencore’s Chief Executive, Patrick Coveney. The petition calls for a living wage and urges Greencore management to stop the attacks on their pay and conditions.

Workers will also visit Dublin’s Department of Agriculture and Food in the afternoon to highlight their campaign. The workers hope to enlist the support of the Irish Government and Simon Coveney, the Minister of Agriculture (and brother of Patrick Coveney) to use the influence of their golden share in Greencore to urge them to end this unfair treatment to its loyal cake and dessert workers.

Hull-based workers from the Irish owned company are in dispute over the company’s decision to ‘permanently’ cut overtime, shift and bank holiday premia, the majority of whom are on the national minimum wage, as well as threatening to sack 236 workers and replace them with agency workers if they do not sign up to the new terms.

Unite has filed a complaint with Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) against Greencore’s unethical behaviour towards its members and the company’s breach of the ETI Base Code that all supermarkets insist their suppliers abide by and that provides a platform of rights for employees.

(CD)

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