UK trade union Unite has filed a “formal complaint” to the Ethical Trading Initiative on behalf of striking workers at Bakkavor.
Staff at the ready-meals maker have been on strike since September last year in a dispute over pay.
The action continues at the UK-listed manufacturer’s site in Spalding in eastern England. Unite says “hundreds” of workers remain on strike.
In December, it emerged some staff had accepted a pay offer from Bakkavor and returned to work.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “Bakkavor’s utter unwillingness to negotiate and to attempt to break a lawful strike has left Unite with no choice. Not only are we telling their customers about their unethical behaviour but we will be targeting any company that continues to do business with them.”
Just Food approached Bakkavor and the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) for comment.
In a statement, Bakkavor CEO Mike Edwards said: “As highlighted in our trading update, Unite has failed to disrupt our business, despite their continued strike action in the face of a very strong and improved final offer that has been put on the table.
As with their run of emotive and false claims – for example, disruption to Christmas food supply, ‘years of real term pay cuts’ and that ‘the majority of the workforce only earn 10p above the National Living Wage’ – their new tactic of claiming that we are breaching ethical trading regulations is also untrue.”
Bakkavor, a major supplier to the likes of Tesco and Waitrose, offered a 7.8% pay increase to its “lowest paid” staff in September and a 6.4% rise across “all other grades”. That was an improvement on the across-the-board 6% pay offer rejected by Spalding staff in May.
As an added incentive, a “discretionary” bonus of £350 ($434) per person was also offered by the company.
Unite said today (31 January) it would ask shoppers at Bakkavor customer Marks and Spencer to contact the UK retailer’s board for the grocer to “tell Bakkavor to return to negotiations”.
Earlier this month, Bakkavor reported a 4% rise in group revenues to £2.29bn during the 52 weeks to 28 December.
The revenues the company generated in the UK grew 5.2% to £1.95bn.
Bakkavor is set to publish its full annual figures on 4 March.
