Asda sees red over seagulls posted by bat020

News just in: workers at Asda's distribution depots have just voted for strike action by 74 percent in a long running dispute over pay and bargaining.

Details of the action will be announced by GMB officials tomorrow, but word is that it will involve a one day strike to coincide with a World Cup quarter final - though pressure is building for an all-out strike.

This announcement is the latest in string of bad news for Asda, which is owned by the loathsome US multinational Wal-Mart. And a little bird tells me that the supermarket's PR department is getting particularly hot and bothered by this article from Socialist Worker which is currently riding high on Google News... so perhaps it's worth quoting at some length:

Asda frozen food left out for the seagulls

by Simon Basketter

Workers at Asda supermarket depots have told Socialist Worker that the company is running risks with food safety. Members of the GMB union at Asda depots are balloting this week over strike action for union recognition. They say that it is not just the working conditions of Asda staff that are under attack by the anti-union company, but the condition of the food.

The company says its systems are safe and that it maintains high standards of health and safety, but workers accuse management of allowing frozen food to stand in the open air for hours after it had been delivered to stores.

Eddie, a GMB union steward from the Midlands, told Socialist Worker, “It is because of the just-in-time system. The food arrives almost as it is needed. Asda has the minimum room in the shops for storage because it takes up space that can be used for selling. The reality is there isn’t enough room to take the deliveries. Think of the hot weather we have had recently. Then think of frozen food sat in the sun.”

Drivers working in Asda depots in the north west of England say that food delivered to stores was sometimes left out for up to two hours before being placed in refrigerators.

One shop steward has made an official complaint to the company that frozen and chilled food was left out at the Gateshead store for six hours one day in May. He says he saw the food at 5pm and that shop staff had shown him a log revealing that it had been delivered at 11am.

Mick, a steward in Bristol told Socialist Worker, “We timed one load of frozen food being left outside in the sun for two hours 45 minutes. We have photos of seagulls picking at the packaging. The food was then taken into the store to be sold.

The workers point out that “checkers” at warehouses, who monitor the dates and rotation of stock, have been axed and the quality of training on food hygiene and trading standards has been cut.

These practices are not an accident but a deliberate strategy. In the management document, Warehouse Chip Away Strategy, the company outlined how Asda planned to drastically undermine labour standards. The document proposed cutting breaks and removing the right to take individual grievances to external arbitrators.

It introduced “single man loading” for jobs involving lifting, despite admitting that the company’s own risk assessment says two people are required for such tasks. Line managers are advised to “lead by example, not taking all the breaks that hourly paid colleagues get” in order to “take credence away from breaks”.

A driver at the company’s Wigan depot called Asda’s health and safety policies an “absolute farce” after photographing teetering pallets stacked up in the back of his vehicle. He said that such massive piles of goods regularly collapsed, putting staff in danger.

The driver says that this was due to direct orders from management to increase the number of cases on the lorries, thus saving costs by not needing to send out as many loads. “It goes to show how much we are worth to Asda, because they are putting profits well above our health and safety,” he said.

Asda is threatening to bring in agency labour to break the strike. This is illegal under British employment law and the GMB is threatening to sue any agencies that supply scab labour to Asda.

All this comes on top of Asda pulling out of a high profile plan to demolish the popular Queens Market in Newham and replace it with one of its superstores. And the company has had to reinstate Hugh Bennett, a truck driver and GMB steward at Asda's Wigan depot who was suspended for displaying an England flag on his cab with VOTE YES emblazoned on it.

There's a theoretical point worth logging here - we hear an awful lot of guff about how "globalisation" is making industrial action by workers irrelevant, cos companies can just shut down factories and move them across to the other side of the planet etc etc...

What's less remarked on is that exactly the same "globalisation" forces companies into deploying "just in time" management techniques that make them extremely vulnerable to strikes by key workers such as those employed in warehouses and depots. No wonder the company's flacks are getting into a flap about seagulls.