Unite for
jobs for food, drink and tobacco workers
While a number of areas within the Food Drink
& Tobacco sector are to some degree resilient in a recession,
key employers within the sector are being opportunistic in their
endeavours to use the downturn to their advantage.
Many of them including major global companies
like Coca Cola Enterprises, Unilever, Cadbury and Imperial Tobacco,
continue to show increased sales and profits. However, they
are keen to stress the current economic crisis as an excuse for
looking to impose either minimal pay increases or pay freezes, as
well as continuing to look for savings through job losses,
contracting out or other attacks on conditions.
All this is in an environment where
shareholders and senior executives have reaped massive rewards
through disproportionate bonuses, pension increases and share
buybacks as well as huge hikes in dividend payouts. So
everyone benefits except the wealth producers – our members.
So it is essential that our union continues to
provide strong leadership for members, arming them with the
information needed to help resist the scare tactics of employers
and to fight back against all attacks on their terms and
conditions.
If those employers who are still able to be
successful in these difficult times are allowed to blatantly
exploit the misery of others in this way, we will erode still
further the number of well-paid, good quality jobs that remain in
the economy.
This will only benefit the fat cats, taking
much needed money out of the pockets of our members and therefore
out of the wider economy.
Unite for Jobs is of crucial importance
to ALL our members. It is about sending a message that we
need to defend not just our jobs but our skills and terms and
conditions.
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