2 Sisters denies staff full reward for working on day of Queen’s funeral
Staff at 2 Sisters, the food producer that supplies most of the UK’s biggest supermarkets, will not get the bank holiday off or bonus pay for working on the day of the Queen’s funeral.
The Unite trade union said companies such as Cadbury and Coca-Cola had agreed to give staff an extra day of holiday, pay them double time or stop production altogether on Monday.
But it said 2 Sisters, whose chicken factories were at the centre of a food-hygiene scandal in 2017, had refused to make such allowances for the nationwide bank holiday to mark the service.
The firm, which is owned by the West Midlands “chicken king” Ranjit Boparan, told Unite that “operations will remain open as usual and no additional annual leave has been allocated”.
The union’s general secretary, Sharon Graham, said: “Many companies cannot switch off their operations during bank holidays, but decent employers compensate their staff for working them.”
A 2 Sisters spokesperson said staff working on Monday would get an extended two-hour break, free breakfast and lunch and could watch the funeral on screens in its canteens.
The West Bromwich-based company is best known for its chicken factories, which process more than 10.4 million birds a week in the UK and Europe and account for about a third of the poultry eaten in Britain every day.
It also makes ready-made products such as pies and pizzas, supplying customers including Aldi, Asda, Co-op, KFC, Lidl, Marks & Spencer, Morrison’s, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose.
The company came under intense scrutiny in 2017 after the Guardian and ITV found it had been tampering with food safety records in an investigation that led to “significant changes” in its operations.
Unite pointed to the company’s heavy losses, both before and
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