Intensifying Exploitation and the Fightback at RF Brookes

Under capitalism, all that matters is profit… ever-increasing profits; with human welfare always relegated to the sidelines. Small businesses grow or die in this uncertain and highly competitive landscape, and those rare family businesses that manage to succeed in this hostile climate are considered prime targets for acquisition by profit-hungry corporations. RF Brookes factory in South Wigston, Leicester, is a case in point. Opening their first family-managed pie factory in 1957 in Warwickshire, RF Brookes soon upgraded to a premises in Leicester, and in the process became known as the best pie manufacturer in the Midlands.

The history of RF Brookes

In later years the pie makers’ continuing successes would lead to their being acquired by RHM plc, which in-turn was purchased in 1992 by the multinational company, Tomkins plc — which was being managed (if you could call it that) by a fat cat called Greg Hutchings, who having been born to wealth (as the son of an oil executive) was already paying himself a phenomenal £1 million a year.

Skipping on, in 2007 RHM plc was taken over by rival food giant Premier Foods for a whopping £1.2 billion. As ever, generating quick profit on the backs of the real wealth producers — the workers — was at the forefront of their new owners minds. So through a series of so-called streamlining cuts, six factories were closed and workers rights attacked. Thus just as RF Brookes was being run by Britain’s largest food producer, whose executives could hardly be said to be strapped for money, paradoxically it was exactly then that the workers jobs were most at risk.

As always, the best way of preventing the inevitable attacks from such a powerful employer is a fully unionized and militant workforce. However, coming hot on the heels of several decades of viscous anti-trade union activism, waged first by the Conservatives and then by New Labour, and goaded on by the mainstream media, the dice were clearly loaded in the managements interests.

By now, 2 Sisters Food Group (who were soon to acquire RF Brookes) were themselves reaching new heights of power and exploitation — the two usually going hand-in-hand under capitalism. And at their Birmingham Smethwick plant, in 2009, they brushed aside internal complaints and collectively punished workers who took a stand against racist abuse in the workplace: in all 55 workers (all members of Unite) were sacked.

Local independent store owner, Dominic Yarnold, “on hearing of the disgraceful treatment of the workers at the hands of 2 Sisters, wasted no time in removing the company’s Devonshire Red products from his shelves.” This was in stark contrast to the actions of Marks & Spencer, a major customer of 2 Sisters, who placed profits before ethics and “refused all approaches from Unite to use its influence to resolve the situation.”

Workers under attack

Returning to RF Brookes: in late 2011, Premier Foods under the guise of voluntary redundancy arrangements laid off a tidy 200 workers from the RF Brookes pie factory. As if this wasn’t bad enough for the factory’s hardworking and long-serving employees, in December 2011 the factory was then acquired by 2 Sisters, who with immediate effect proceeded to attack their new workers pay and conditions.

As part of 2 Sisters’ “restructuring” plans it was soon announced that another 193 workers were to be made redundant, but this time at a much-reduced rate of payment. Hard won-for pay and conditions mean nothing to leach-like capitalists in their endless pursuit of profit. The workers however had, by this time, had enough of 2 Sisters blatant disregard for their lives, and determined strike action began.

2 Sisters responded in a typical way by busing in non-unionized temporary agency staff, supplied courtesy of A La Carte Recruitment, a Leicester-based agency owned by Staffline Group plc. Likewise it is important to observe that 2 Sisters were in many ways emulating the attacks on workers waged by their major contractor, Mark & Spencer, who in August 2008 “sacked one [of] its workers who had blown the whistle on the high street retailer’s plans to slash the redundancy terms of its 60,000 staff by up to 25%.”

Who’s behind 2 Sisters Food Group?

Headquartered in Birmingham, 2 Sisters Food Group is a privately owned company that was established in 1993 by Ranjit Boparan, who is also known in the trade as the “Chicken King” because of his domination of the British poultry market. Following the acquisition of Northern Foods in April 2011, 2 Sisters now employs around 18,000 people, with annual sales of over £2.1 billion. Although 2 Sisters owns well-known brands like Buxted, Devonshire Red, Fox’s Biscuits, and Goodfella’s Pizza, 2 Sisters is predominantly a private label manufacturer, and so the RF Brookes factory in Leicester produces home brand products for Marks & Spencer.

With regard to Ranjit Boparan himself, according to an article published in The Guardian: “A more secretive businessman would be hard to find”; but as noted by his employees, what Boparan doesn’t keep secret is his bid to stop at nothing to establish a £3.5 billion food empire. Indeed, with the help of his ongoing attacks on workers rights, 2 Sisters profits rose by a third in 2009 (to nearly £34 million), and after snapping up Northern Foods in 2011 he and his wife were estimated to be worth £750 million.

On the one hand while it is evident that Ranjit Boparan is intent on scrapping his employees rights, at the same time, in order to boast his flailing public image, the Boparan families Boparan Charitable Trust (formed in July 2009) also throws a few pounds and pennies (and maybe some pies) back to the growing number of destitute children in the UK: many of who’s lives are wrecked by Boparan and his capitalist ilk’s commitment to institutionalized child poverty. (Sadly, prosecution though the courts is the only way to get capitalists to pay their way in society, and it is through such means that the head of the Boparan Charitable Trust, Ranjit’s son Antonio Boparan, has been forced to give £450,000 a year to a young girl he left paralyzed and brain damaged in the wake of a tragic and needless car accident.)

Likewise, the current chairman of 2 Sisters, media mogul Charles Allen, sometimes feels sorry for the disadvantaged, while seemingly doing his utmost to ensure that their numbers will be maximized; which then leaves more for him to “help” through charity. Taking a week’s leave from his £50 million house, Allen recently participated in Channel 4’s reality TV show “The Secret Millionaire,” where he wept at the plight of the poor, and then gave them some of his dirty money.

Allen is perhaps best known as the former chief executive of ITV plc, who throughout his career has gained a “reputation as a ruthless job-cutter,” and he is presently a board member of both Tesco plc and of Richard Branson’s Virgin Media. Yet despite clearly being a central member of the British ruling class (David Cameron even “once worked closely with him, as communications director at Carlton TV”), Allen says: “I’d still say I’m working-class, I don’t think your class changes.” This from a man who for the past four years has acted as a senior advisor to Goldman Sachs, which is a central part of the financial oligarchy that caused the sub-prime crisis in the United States and “brought the world economy 24 hours away from collapse.”

Another 2 Sisters board member, Mark Hunter, who like Allen has business friends in places that are not well known for their friendliness to workers. This is because Mark Hunter is the President of Molson Coors Brewing Company (UK) Ltd. Peter Coors, who is the vice chair of this companies parent company, Molson Coors, is a man of some infamy in the United States, being the trustee of two extremely influential and well-endowed right-wing philanthropies (the Adolph Coors Foundation and the Castle Rock Foundation). Not being prone to messing around, since the early 1970s, Peter and the related members of the ultra-conservative Coors family have played a key role in financing the Right-wing backlash against the working class in America, funding all manner of organizations, all united in their vehement opposition to any form of trade union activism.

The final three board members of 2 Sisters are: David Gregory (who retired as Marks & Spencer’s Food Division’s Director of Technology in 2009), Steve Henderson (who came to 2 Sisters having spent 17 years at Northern Foods), and Andrew Cripps (the former Head of Strategy Development at British American Tobacco plc). Since 2007, Andrew Cripps has been a board member of Booker Group plc — the UK’s leading food wholesaler — whose chief executive (Charles Wilson) is a recent board member of Marks & Spencer.

Andrew Cripps’ fellow Booker board member, Lord Karan Bilimoria, may also prove to be a useful contact for 2 Sisters in their ongoing and underhanded efforts to streamline their UK operations, as Lord Bilimoria is the president of the UK India Business Council. This Council is chaired by former New Labour MP for Leicester West, the Rt Hon Patricia Hewitt, and is the premier business-led organisation promoting bilateral trade and investment between the UK and India.

The work of this organization is closely related to the proposed EU-India free trade agreement, which if implemented would prove disastrous for the working class in both Europe and in India; only serving to further boost the ability of capitalists, like Boparan, to exploit their workers. Indeed, it is precisely through such connections to people like Lord Bilimoria that Ranjit Borapan will be looking to make his fortune on the backs of the working class.**

The Alternative

In response, it is only through determined and coordinated industrial action that the working class can unify to bring an end to workplace injustice. The poor should not be punished for the capitalists crisis. The government’s brutal cuts agenda does not need to take place, and instead we need to work together to force the government to collect the £120 billion a year that goes uncollected in tax from the ruling class. Moreover to prevent further job losses, and bring a halt to the rising tide of (profit-seeking) factory closures, serious efforts must be made to nationalise key industries, which will allow production to continue under democratic workers’ control.

Struggles across the public and private sector need to be joined up, and workers need to assert their power against capitalist bankers and politicians and join with the Socialist Party in calling for a 24-hour General Strike. If the current political parties refuse to act in the interest of the working class, then there is no other choice than for the workers to unite within the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition to form a new workers party that will fight for, and not against, working class interests.

** Strengthening the indirect connections between 2 Sisters and Lord Bilimoria, in 2009 Molson Coors UK established a joint venture to distribute Cobra Beer (a brand established by Lord Bilimoria) outside of South Asia.

Please send messages of support and solidarity to tony.lewis@bfawu.org