Poultry workers fall foul of 2 Sisters’ owner’s streamlining

A Birmingham food entrepreneur is to streamline one of his recently-acquired operations with the loss of nearly 130 jobs.

The private office of 2 Sisters Food Group owner Ranjit Singh Boparan acquired turkey and chicken producer Bernard Matthews in a pre-pack deal last September.

The terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The deal was thought to have safeguarded the jobs of 2,000 people at the turkey producer’s operations in Norfolk and Suffolk.

At the time, the Unite union gave a cautious welcome to the acquisition but said today that it had been right to be wary.

It said the Bernard Matthews workers in Norfolk felt betrayed and let down by Mr Boparan after it was revealed 69 chicken production and 59 managerial positions were being axed.

The union, the country’s largest, said the Bernard Matthews workers were led to believe that when the company was purchased by Mr Boparan’s private office last year extra chicken production would be generated.

The 69 chicken production jobs are at the company’s south site headquarters at Great Witchingham. The other job losses are managerial, technical and clerical staff. The north site, which deals with turkey production, is unaffected.

Unite regional officer Steve Harley said: “We are obviously disappointed by the announcement that the new owners will cease year-round chicken production at Great Witchingham.

“Our members, who met senior representatives of the 2 Sisters Food Group during the transition period, feel very let down, as these representatives indicated that investment would secure existing jobs and there was also the opportunity to attract more chicken business to the site, so utilising existing spare capacity.

“This has clearly not happened and, therefore, many of those workers feel betrayed as they consider they were misled.”

The union said it had worked closely with the management to minimise the number of redundancies and some redundancies had been avoided due to redeployment across other parts of the business.

“Unite accepted that difficult decisions needed to be made as the firm needs to return to profit, but we will fight to ensure that cost reductions are not simply about reducing the workforce headcount,” added Mr Harley.

“Bernard Matthews has clearly suffered greatly from a lack of business strategy under the previous owners, Rutland Partners and we remain hopeful that 2 Sisters will work closely with Unite to ensure both profitability and job security are treated as equal priorities.”

Unite represents about 550 of the 1,400-strong workforce at the production sites at Great Witchingham and Holton in Suffolk.

Parts of the former Bernard Matthews business have been transferred to other divisions, or subsidiary parts of the 2 Sisters Group, for example, the animal feed operations at Bawsey, near King’s Lynn.

The union said that, at present, hourly paid staff at Holton, Suffolk are not affected by the announcements.