Fire and Rehire: do as your told or you’ll get a roasting!

Workers on strike gathered outside the Dutch owned Jacobs Douwe Egbert’s factory in Banbury today. They said the managements’ new regime has “decimated morale, and employed unscrupulous and underhand tactics that jeopardise the security of the workforce” along with the future of the plant.

A long term employed staff member who wished to remain anonymous said, “it quickly went downhill when the new management took over a few years ago, the place is powered by temps and they are treated badly too. It’s accept 6–6 shifts or you can take a long holiday!”. The company has previously been described as “corporate Gangsters” by workers union ‘Unite’.

With alleged business manoeuvres that threaten anyone who doesn’t agree to new terms with dismissal, the staff are feeling insecure and are out on the streets in shifts to alert the public to the scandal. Unite are involved trying to safeguard the future of the workers whose household loss could be as much as £24,000 per year under the new terms.

Chris Gray of Unite said the attack to redundancy terms, overtime rates and shift allowances and an attempt to ‘fire and rehire’ could have devastating effects on the staff, a large proportion of whom have been employed at the site for over 20 years.

Unite’s emeregency meeting with Jacobs Douwe Egberts on Monday yielded few results, with JDE management saying there is an “overwhelming need for change, with proposed changes to shift patterns necessary to make the company more competitive.

JDE, which makes Kenco Tassimo and Millicano at the plant, has been at home in Banbury, Oxfordshire since 2015, before such time it was owned by Kraft. The Factory was built in 1964.

The strike continues tomorrow where workers will take it in shifts to stand outside the entrance of the factory with banners and flags and placards. There is much support from passers by with many drivers feeling compelled to sound their horns and flash lights I support of the workers efforts.