GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Unilever Caribbean Ltd (UCL) will re­trench about 108 em­ploy­ees from its man­u­fac­tur­ing di­vi­sion ef­fec­tive Ju­ly 31, 2022.

Unilever Caribbean Ltd’s OW­TU rep­re­sen­ta­tive Neil Mc Each­nie con­firmed the move yes­ter­day.

“It will es­sen­tial­ly be all of the unionised staff and I be­lieve it will al­so af­fect a cou­ple man­agers, par­tic­u­lar­ly those as­so­ci­at­ed with the man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tion,” Mc Each­nie said.

He said while the re­trench­ment is some­thing that “no­body wants, it is some­thing we have come to ac­cept.”

In a pre­vi­ous in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia in March this year, Mc Each­nie said the move had been ex­pect­ed since 2019, when over 250 work­ers were re­trenched fol­low­ing re­struc­tur­ing at the com­pa­ny.

A state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day said with the com­pa­ny’s third-par­ty sup­ply agree­ment set to end on Ju­ly 31, UCL has is­sued no­tices of re­trench­ment to its em­ploy­ees from the man­u­fac­tur­ing di­vi­sion.

It ex­plained that af­ter Unilever sold its Spreads busi­ness in 2018, UCL, as part of its re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise, en­tered in­to a four-year sup­ply agree­ment with a third par­ty.

The state­ment said this arrange­ment was the re­sult of ex­haus­tive analy­ses of the cur­rent op­er­a­tions and var­i­ous re­struc­tur­ing strate­gies.

“Now that the sup­ply agree­ment has ex­pired, the com­pa­ny, un­for­tu­nate­ly, has no op­tion but to let go the em­ploy­ees of the man­u­fac­tur­ing di­vi­sion,” the state­ment added.

It said be­fore in­sti­tut­ing this re­trench­ment ex­er­cise, UCL en­gaged in ex­ten­sive con­sul­ta­tions with the OW­TU, the recog­nised ma­jor­i­ty union for work­ers em­ployed by the com­pa­ny.

“These in-depth dis­cus­sions were meant to reach a mu­tu­al­ly agree­able out­come, if at all pos­si­ble, in the in­ter­est of all par­ties, es­pe­cial­ly the af­fect­ed work­ers,” the state­ment added.

It said the com­pa­ny will con­tin­ue to pri­ori­tise the safe­ty of all per­son­nel, plant and equip­ment and will con­tin­ue to ac­tive­ly pur­sue the well-be­ing of the peo­ple and the op­er­a­tions of the com­pa­ny. UCL will abide by and op­er­ate in ac­cor­dance with all le­gal oblig­a­tions in all mat­ters re­lat­ing to this de­ci­sion, it added.

The com­pa­ny ex­pressed its deep ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the ser­vice and con­tri­bu­tion made by its em­ploy­ees over the past years.

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