{"id":30027,"date":"2021-09-20T12:06:19","date_gmt":"2021-09-20T11:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=30027"},"modified":"2021-09-21T13:57:33","modified_gmt":"2021-09-21T12:57:33","slug":"weetabix-engineers-to-strike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=30027","title":{"rendered":"Weetabix engineers to strike"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Engineers employed by Weetabix, the UK\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s favourite breakfast cereal, will begin strike action tomorrow (September 21) as a result of the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s plans to carry out an extensive \u00e2\u20ac\u015bFire and Rehire\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 programme with the workforce. If workers accept the new terms many will lose up to \u00c2\u01415,000 a year in wages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The workers, members of Unite, are based at the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s factories at Burton Latimer and Corby in Northamptonshire. Both sites will have picket lines in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bUnite\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s members at Weetabix will not accept being fired and rehired. Unite will fight to defend our members affected by this disgraceful practice. It is abhorrent that it is legal for companies, like Weetabix, to issue \u00e2\u20ac\u0098Fire and Rehire\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 ultimatums to their staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bThis is a totally unjustifiable assault on workers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 wages and conditions. Last year Weetabix\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s profits went up by almost 20% to more than \u00c2\u014181 million,” she added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The strike on Tuesday will last for 48 hours and there will a further 48 hour strike beginning Tuesday throughout the autumn, with the final strike scheduled to begin on Tuesday, November 30.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The picket lines at the Kettering factory will be in place on Tuesday (September 21) from 6.45am, while the picket lines at the Corby factory will commence from Tuesday at 6am.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The engineers are facing changes to their shifts and working patterns, which would result in the worst affected engineers being \u00c2\u01415,000 a year worse off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The strikes will cause widespread delays to production and led to shortages of Weetabix and other popular products made by the factories including Alpen, Weetos and Oatibix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weetabix has performed very strongly since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020. It returned a net turnover of $440 million, a 5.3 per cent increase, with profits of $112.3 million, an 18.5 per cent increase.  Owners US cereal giant Post Holdings Inc most recent accounts show it had a turnover of $5.7 billion, an operating profit of $700.8 million and $1.2 billion in cash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unite regional secretary for the East Midlands Paresh Patel said, \u00e2\u20ac\u015bWeetabix could end this dispute by simply withdrawing the attacks on workers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 pay.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u015bStrike action will inevitably lead to severe disruption of Weetabix\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s products but this is entirely of the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own making.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Barckley Sumner<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Engineers employed by Weetabix, the UK\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s favourite breakfast cereal, will begin strike action tomorrow (September 21) as a result of the company\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s plans to carry out an extensive \u00e2\u20ac\u015bFire and Rehire\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 programme with the workforce. If workers accept the new terms many will lose up to \u00c2\u01415,000 a year in wages. The workers, members of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12131,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[1409,1657],"wps_subtitle":"Weetabix engineers to fight fire and rehire threat with strike action","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30027"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30027"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30030,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30027\/revisions\/30030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}