2 Sisters’ Rampage For Profit

In their relentless search for profits the most natural way that Britain’s largest food manufacturers bolster their bank balances is by viciously attacking the pay and conditions of their employees, and of course by sacking staff. At present, managements’ excuse for such aggression is the so-called financial crisis.

Little mention is made of the fact that the crisis was caused by the banking sector, who were bailed out (read: rewarded) by the Tories, courtesy of the British taxpayer. Bankers continue to reap vast financial rewards whilst the rest of us are being increasingly punished by a government of millionaires.

Yet if capitalists paid their taxes like the rest of us, there would be no financial crisis. With recent studies demonstrating that each year £120 billion goes uncollected in tax from the super-rich.

In Carlisle, attacks on workers in the food manufacturing sector have been ongoing in recent years: an onslaught that has intensified in recent weeks through the brutal actions taken by the 2 Sisters Food Group at the Cavaghan & Gray ready meals factory. A factory whose biggest customer is the faux-ethical Marks & Spencer.

After creaming off a £12 million pay-package last year, 2 Sisters’ owners are now intent on making the 800 staff at their Carlisle factory suffer for their own lavish lifestyle — a luxury lifestyle that, in the manner of any good capitalist, involves a high commitment to tax avoidance and no commitment to the workforce who produce their profits.

Such repressive actions are by no means unusual for 2 Sisters, as in Leicester they are currently in the process of closing their RF Brookes factory and refusing to pay their workers the redundancy money to which they are entitled. While just the other day it was reported that 2 Sisters’ employees in Batley are facing similarly savage attacks on their pay at a Fox’s Biscuits factory.

2 Sisters are not the only over-sized food manufacturer to mistreat their workers. A good argument can be made that such abuse is really quite normal under a political and economic system that elevates profit before all over considerations. Which is precisely why the Socialist Party is committed to fighting for a socialist future where society is run for the needs of the many instead of for the greed of a few.

Either way, before April 2011 — when the Cavaghan & Gray factory was bought under the management of 2 Sisters following the acquisition of Northern Foods — Cavvies’ workers had already been under sustained attacks from a “streamlining” and profit-hungry management.

For example, in October 2009 Cavaghan & Gray closed their Hull factory leaving 350 people unemployed with next to no redundancy money; one worker, quoted in a newspaper article observed, “I have worked there for five years and have only received £860.” An example of blatant exploitation carried out in the name of efficiency savings no less, and at the time overseen by the watchful eye of Northern Foods who had bought Cavvies in 1998.

This however was no anomaly. Thus, under Northern Foods’ management regime, we might recall that prior to 2004 Cavaghan & Gray had actually been the biggest employer in Carlisle, that is, until Northern Foods closed down its London Road site with the loss of 660 jobs. The class war against workers is indeed long and brutal.

Notably, Howard Sims, the former chief executive of Cavaghan & Gray who oversaw the sale of the Cavvies food group to Northern Foods failed to suffer the same fate as many of his loyal workers. This is because extracting ever increasing profits from a workforce is something that is positively encouraged by his fellow capitalists.

Thus it should come as no surprise that Sims is presently a partner of immensely lucrative Brookes Partnership, a financial consultancy that works closely with infamous private equity scumbags like the Blackstone Group, which was set up in 2005 by his investment-banking friends, Ian Kellett and Darren Chadwick.

Here we might note that both Kellett and Chadwick formerly worked in senior positions with the former financial giant Dresdner Kleinwort, while Kellett could even boast of previously working for RF Brookes under the leadership of fellow Brookes Partnership partner Rick Turnbull (a man who actually ran RF Brookes for nearly twenty years).

It is fitting to add that Michael Abrahams CBE, the former chairman of Cavaghan & Gray who helped Sims oversee Northern Foods’ acquisition of Cavvies, is likewise doing extremely well for himself — presently serving as the chairman of Ferrexpo, a Swiss-based mining company trading in Ukrainian iron. Abrahams clearly has never been one to shy away from ruling class cliques, and during his time at Cavaghan & Gray he served simultaneously under Sir Martin Jacomb as the deputy chairman of Prudential.

Sir Jacomb of course is best-known for being the former deputy chairman of Barclays Bank (1985-93); while more recently Jacomb retired from the board rooms of Rio Tinto and Marks & Spencer so he could spend more time working for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a misleadingly named group who actively support profit obsessed capitalists in their dangerous attempts to oppose much needed action to mitigate climate change.

Much like Northern Foods, 2 Sisters’ management cares only about one thing… profits. For them this equates to bulging bank balances, a scrupulous avoidance of tax, and sacking and/or squeezing more and more “productivity” from their employees. Such practices are obscene and must be stopped through collective well-coordinated industrial action.

If all of 2 Sisters employees across Britain (and overseas) got together to resist their bosses (through existing rank-and-file organisations such as the National Shop Stewards Network), 2 Sisters would have no choice but to give in to their demands for social justice.

Ultimately the real power rests in the hands of those who create the profits for 2 Sisters, the workers. But this power can only be fully realised when the workers are organised collectively, just as effectively as their so-called managers are.