Jun 26 2008
Obama v Tesco
Inside a Fresh and Easy Store (photo Fresh and Easy)
The Guardian reports that Barack Obama has written to Sir Terry Leahy, Chief Executive of Tesco, to urge him to engage with the US trade union representing workers at Tesco’s new US venture, Fresh and Easy.
Without union engagement, the union claims that Fresh and Easy’s workers are stuck with no written contract of employment and working conditions that compare unfavourably with Tesco’s employees in Britain.
“Talk to us!”
The possible future US president’s intervention is a success for the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, which has been campaigning to encourage Tesco to talk to them. Despite Tesco’s strong relationship and partnership with USDAW, the British union representing 85,000 of its workers, they’ve so far reportedly refused all invitations to engage with UFCW.
Global standards or double standards?
Tesco assert that their workers are free to join the union and that they’ve “engaged with community leaders”, but it’s a far cry from their partnership with USDAW in Britain. Elsewhere, the trades union movement has raised questions about labour relations in some of Tesco’s other oversees operations, such as Tesco Lotus in Thailand.
UFCW has dubbed Tesco the “Wal-Mart of Britain”. It’s a confusing turn of phrase, as another British supermarket, Asda, is actually owned by Wal-Mart. And while Wal-Mart’s attitude towards unions is notoriously uncooperative (except in China), Asda, like Tesco, has a rather good relationship with British unions.
The different approaches taken by companies around the globe demonstrate the importance of labour laws and established workers’ rights. Britain is no longer a cushy environment for trades unions and their workers, but it’s a lot more comfortable than America and other countries.
Easy facts?
UFCW has teemed up with “grocery workers, food industry professionals” to create freshandeasyfacts.com, also known as freshandqueasy.com, to publicise their campaign against Tesco. Don’t bother trying these links to the Fresh and Easy Facts homepage from the UK. It’s blocked to UK-based browsers, presumably for legal reasons.
Other pages are accessible, though, such as “Get the Facts“, which summarises and links to various stories, mostly in the British press, about Tesco’s environmental record and infringement of food safety laws.
Hard facts?
Strangely, there’s no mention of working conditions or labour terms. It seems USDAW, apparently disappointed and frustrated by Tesco’s failure to talk to them, have chosen to mount a broad attack on Tesco’s record.
There’s even a video questioning just how “easy” Fresh and Easy is, whose entire argument is based on the absence of leading brands from the shelves, where own-label products dominate. Another video - an extract from a BBC Whistleblower documentary - exposes undercover footage of apparent breaches of food safety laws.
Frightening and entertaining they may be, but these videos are hardly relevant to the issue of labour standards.
For a serious analysis of Tesco’s relations with the unions, at home and abroad, read UCFW’s report, The Two Faces of Tesco (pdf, 4.25Mb).
Here, the hard facts about working conditions in Fresh and Easy are compared with those in Tesco at home in Britain. “No written contract of employment”, “Fresh & Easy employees are allowed only 60 hours paid time off [a year], and this must be used for time off sick as well as for holidays”, “Fresh & Easy only guarantees 20 hours of work per week”? It doesn’t sound right.
