Zarah ChoudharyTrade union Unite has warned that industrial action is likely at food wholesale and distributor Bidfood, unless it reverses its decision to derecognise unions.
Bidfood’s clients that could face disruption include including schools, prisons, the army, Subway, Five Guys and Manchester United.
On 17th January, Unite and the other recognised union were told that Bidfood was undoing the recognition agreement that had been in place for over 30 years and derecognising them.
Sharon Graham, general secretary at Unite, 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.”
Unite warned that the decision to derecognise the union was a precursor to negative changes to workers’ pay and conditions, including a potential for ‘fire and rehire’ practices, but Bidfood dismissed this as an attempt to “scaremonger.”
Adrian Jones, national officer at Unite said: “Bidfood’s actions are disgraceful and Unite is considering all options about how to respond including industrial action.
“The company’s clients will be alarmed they they could be facing a spring of cancelled deliveries, due to industrial action and should be demanding to know exactly what Bidfood is playing at.”
A spokesperson at Bidfood said: “We can confirm that after careful consideration, we have made the decision to withdraw our voluntary agreement to have a Collective Bargaining Unit (CBU) across our business from 17th January 2025.
“This was not a decision we made lightly, however we’ve found in recent years that the CBU is not reflective of the interests of the majority of our employees and is therefore not fully representative of those working within transport or our warehouse roles, with a number of employees voicing concerns and frustrations over long delays in resolving issues.
“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.
“This further cements our view that this is not the collaborative approach we aspired to have between ourselves and the trade unions.
“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, 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.
“We really value our people and pride ourselves on being a people business. We take the importance of listening to and supporting them incredibly seriously, and we value contributions and feedback from all of our employees.
“We remain committed to ensuring an open approach to discussing and tackling issues and wholeheartedly believe this is a positive step for our business and our people.”
