Glasgow factory workers to escalate strike action amid threat of tinned food shortages

Factory workers in Glasgow who produce supermarket tinned goods are to escalate strike action amid a row over pay.

Princes Food staff are to ramp up industrial action in Bradford, Cardiff, Glasgow, Long Sutton and Wisbech after the company failed to provide an improved offer, a leading trade union said.

Unite members at the company’s Cardiff factory have already taken strike action, and more workers will join the picket line in January.

Princes Foods produces household-name products, such as Branston and Crosse & Blackwell, as well as own-brand tins and jars of meat and fish.

Unite says the strikes will likely lead to shortages in supermarkets and shops across the country.

The previous owner, Mitsubishi, offered staff a 4% to 7% pay rise, depending on salary.

The company was then bought by an Italian-based multinational, Newlat S.P.A, which Unite say withdrew that offer with a 3% pay rise now on the table.

Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “Newlat needs to get back round the negotiating table before its customers discover they won’t have any products on their shelves.

“Our members work in back-breaking roles on low pay and want a fair slice of the pie.

“Newlat make 20% of all their revenues in the UK and are making money off the backs of these workers. Yet they want to shortchange our members. Unite won’t stand for such behaviour and back our members 100 per cent.”

Affected staff work as line operatives and engineers at the Princes Food sites.

Unite national officer for food, drink and agriculture, Paul Travers, said: “Newlat borrowed huge sums of money to buy Princes and is now looking to cut corners and penny-pinch to pay that money back. Unite won’t let them do so with our members’ livelihoods.

“Newlat can avoid this strike, which is one of their own making, by coming back to the negotiating table with a new and improved pay deal for our members.”

Princes Food say the offer tabled is fair and represents a real terms above inflation pay increase.

A Princes spokesperson said: “It is now clear to us that it is becoming increasingly difficult to resolve this dispute with Unite.

“We have engaged the Union in discussions for several months, tabled an above inflation pay rise and had offered to backdate this to April 2024 whilst discussions were ongoing but Unite advised us that they would not permit the business to do this.

“We completely recognise the difficult economic circumstances our colleagues, our industry and the wider UK faces.

“Our industry has faced covid and Brexit impacts, then inflation and a cost of living crisis and navigating these has required empathy, sacrifice and pulling together as one team which colleagues across our business have done so well.

“The Princes board fully understands our very serious obligation to looking after our colleagues, but we have that exact same obligation to keeping Princes a sustainable business in the long term through focussing on managing our costs and being a competitive supplier of UK food and beverages.”