Gunstones bakery strike, 15.6.15, photo A Tice

Gunstones bakery strike, 15.6.15, photo A Tice   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Bakery workers fight pay freeze and other cuts

Alistair Tice

“Gunstones Bakery – 150 years in the making, three years to destroy!” That’s how one union steward described the effect of the take-over of the Dronfield site, near Sheffield, by the 2 Sisters Food Group.

600 Bakery, Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) members started a 48-hour strike today, 15th June, for a pay rise and against any cuts in terms and conditions.

60-70 strikers joined picket lines from 5-30am. Their basic pay is £6-59 an hour. They’ve not had a pay rise for three years.

Last autumn, the company lost a £33 million order with Marks and Spencer and cut 427 jobs.

Gunstones bakery strike, 15.6.15, photo A Tice

Gunstones bakery strike, 15.6.15, photo A Tice   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Agency staff were supposed to be kept to a minimum and it was understood that there would be pay negotiations this year.

Now the company has said there’s no money. Well, 2 Sisters owner Ranjit Singh Bopara has an estimated personal fortune worth £190 million! And the new site director recently took receipt of a new £80k BMW!
Since the job losses, they’ve flooded the factory with agency staff – one steward reckoned 70% of night staff are agency workers and 45% on day shifts.

John Higgins, bakers’ union organising district secretary said: “The management are saying no pay rise this year and they want to cut terms and conditions next. They say that they want to ‘equalise contracts’ which means taking the old contracts down to agency conditions, cutting premium rates even further. It’s the race to the bottom.”

On the picket line, worker after worker said they had worked at Gunstones for years, one for over 20 years, but never known things so bad. They all said that they’d had enough and didn’t see why they should pay for Boparan losing orders and getting the company into even more debt.

Gunstones bakery strike, 15.6.15, photo by A Tice

Gunstones bakery strike, 15.6.15, photo by A Tice   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Management were out in force to get agency staff and delivery lorries in. There was way over six official managers on the picket line! But pickets grew bolder as more wagons stopped and drivers talked. Most were frightened for their jobs. One van driver’s boss drove behind him and threatened to sack him there and then if he didn’t cross the picket line!

Management has set up an operations tent in the car park and trained CCTV cameras on the pickets but the strikers will not be intimidated and will strike again next month if the company doesn’t back down.


This version of this article was first posted on the Socialist Party website on 15 June 2015 and may vary slightly from the version subsequently printed in The Socialist.