A union is warning that family restaurant chains including Burger King, KFC and Pizza Hut are facing the prospect of “severe disruption” to food supplies in the run-up to Christmas.
The GMB union said it was launching a strike vote among its near-600 members at Best Food Logistics, which delivers fresh produce to many big name fast food outlets and dining firms, which also include Wagamama and Zizzi.
It said that 93% of staff had rejected a 6% pay offer as it was significantly below the rate of inflation and amounted to a real terms pay cut this year and into next.
Nadine Houghton, GMB National Officer, said: “These workers bust a gut to deliver fresh, just in time food to some of the biggest names in the business.
“Best Food’s parent companies Booker and Tesco are making incredibly healthy profits and paying large dividends, while leaving these workers crushed by cost of living.
“Now some of their biggest clients may well be left short this Christmas because they won’t meet GMB’s reasonable request for a pay deal that protects our members through this year and into next with a genuine cost of living increase.”
Sky News has attempted to contact the company for comment.
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The prospect of disruption to supplies for chains builds on a year of intensifying union action across the economy that has seen railway workers, Royal Mail and Post Office staff-to-Felixstowe dock workers walk out in a fight for better pay.
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The outgoing leader of the trade union body the TUC has warned key health care workers could be next on the picket lines this winter.
Frances O’Grady was due to tell its annual Congress they were already struggling with rising bills and claim that members of unions were facing the “longest squeeze on real wages since Napoleonic times”.
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“If ministers and employers keep hammering pay packets at the same rate, UK workers are on course to suffer two decades of lost living standards”, she said.
“We have got to stop the rot”.
The prospect of a pay fight between the government and unions representing health workers could not come at a more difficult time given winter pressure on the NHS and the clear signal from the new chancellor Jeremy Hunt that he will be keeping a tight hold of the public purse strings in the wake of the disastrous mini-budget outlined by his predecessor.
