Cadbury Faces Strike Action

Cadbury UK faces a possible drop in production following threatened strike action over pay by union Unite.
Union leaders say the global confectionary firm is breaking a long-standing three-year pay deal to give workers a minimum annual increase of at least 2 per cent. They claim the company is now offering 0.5 per cent.

More than 1300 Cadburys workers at UK plants including Bourneville, Chirk and Marlbrook, began to vote on the action on Saturday.

Jennie Formby, Unite national officer for the food and retail sector, said: “The workers are angry that while Cadbury’s managers and shareholders carve up a hefty 30 per cent leap in profits, made by the hard work of the employees, workers are left choking on the crumbs, a derisory 0.5 per cent in their pay packets.

“It is unacceptable that a company as profitable as Cadbury seeks to use a recession to snatch back money meant for workers. We ask Cadbury now to honour its commitments because these workers deserve nothing less than the fair pay they were promised.”

Unite is conducting a consultative ballot of the workforce for industrial action. The ballot opened on July 18 and will close on August 18.

The ballot will exclude workers at Cadbury Somerdale site because of a punitive clause in their redundancy agreement, which means they forfeit all enhanced redundancy payments if they take any industrial action, according to the union.

“The pay issue is particularly important for the Somerdale workers because they were counting on the two per cent pay increase to enhance not just their last earnings with the company before their factory closes and production goes to Poland, but also to boost their final redundancy pay. They may be being denied a voice in this process but Unite will still fight for the best deal for them,” added Jennie Formby.

Last month, Cadbury issued a statement from chief executive Todd Stitzer, which said the company was making “good progress”. He said: “Our early progress has continued into the second quarter with our businesses focused on delivering market share gains and efficiency improvements. As a result, we reconfirm our full year guidance for revenue growth around the lower end of our 4-6 per cent goal range and to make good progress toward our goal of mid-teens margins by 2011.”