Bidfood will no longer be recognising the two trade unions representing its workers, after it stopped longstanding recognition agreements with Unite and GMB and will now move to an Employee Engagement Forum model.
The foodservice wholesaler has claimed that collective bargaining is no longer reflective of the interests of many of its employees and not fully representative of those working within transport or our warehouse roles. The company’s statement also claims that a number of employees have voiced concerns and frustrations over long delays in resolving issues using the collective bargaining model.
“In order to best represent and support our warehouse and transport community, it’s important for us to work with our teams directly through our Employee Engagement Forums,” said the Bidfood statement. “Which we believe represent a wider range of our employees’ views across all sites, and are a more agile, effective and collaborative way to listen, discuss and resolve matters that are important to our employees, in real time.”
Read more: Union agrees pay deal for Bidfood employees
Unite has warned that industrial action is now probable at Bidfood unless the company reverses its decision, with Unite claiming that the unions were told without warning on Friday (17th Jan) that Bidford was stopping the agreements. General secretary Sharon Graham said: “Bidfood is guilty of union busting pure and simple and Unite will not tolerate such behaviour at any level. Unite’s focus is always on defending its members and Bidfood needs to reverse its perverse decision or face the inevitable consequences.”
Bidfood responded to Unite’s claims with the following: “Following the highly inflammatory and untrue claims made in the releases that GMB and Unite have issued, we want to make it clear that we are in no way threatening a ‘fire and rehire’ of our employees, nor are we planning to change their terms and conditions. It’s really disappointing to see the unions attempt to scaremonger in order to foster mistrust and doubt among our employees. These further cements our view that this is not the collaborative approach we aspired to have between ourselves and the trade unions.”
Meanwhile, Nadine Houghton, GMB National Officer added: “GMB, Unite and Bidfood have successfully worked together to improve workers’ pay, terms and conditions since at least the 1990s. Our members work hard delivering vital food supplies for the army, prisons and schools across the UK. They deserve the protections union recognition brings. Without us, bosses will be able to do what they want, ripping up their contracts and enforcing worse terms and conditions.”
