Diageo workers claim victory in redundancy battle

Published on Thursday 10 December 2009 13:53

WORKERS facing the axe at drinks giant Diageo claimed today they had won their fight for fairer redundancy payments.

In September, Diageo announced it was pressing ahead with the closure of the Johnnie Walker bottling plant in Kilmarnock and the Port Dundas grain distillery in Glasgow, with 900 workers at the two sites losing their jobs.

The announcement triggered a massive cross-party campaign to try to force Diageo to reconsider.

But yesterday Unite confirmed the campaign to save the jobs had ended.

Unite said today that Diageo had agreed to increase the "termination payments" by 4,000 to 9,000 per person and remove altogether its previous conditions that the payment would be based on productivity and attendance.

The drinks giant has also opened up the pension scheme to allow part of the packages to be paid in to workers' pension pots, boosting both the retirement lump sum and the pension, Unite said.

Workers had voted on the Diageo proposals in workplace ballots at the Kilmarnock, Shieldhall and Port Dundas plants.

The offer was accepted by almost four to one, Unite said.

Jennie Formby, Unite national officer for the food and drinks sector, said:

"The final package is one that provides benefits for members that are second to none. But we firmly believe that without the courage and determination of the workers, and the excellent leadership of their union stewards, we would not have seen any movement from the company.

"The fighting spirit the workers demonstrated throughout the whole campaign let Diageo know that they simply could not walk away from these communities without fair and proper compensation.

"Every site had a very clear majority to accept, with Kilmarnock as the largest site showing an 80% acceptance, which is a very clear endorsement of the proposals.

"Of course we are very disappointed not to have been able to save sites from closure, but this is a painful reminder that it is only too easy in the UK for companies to close sites in this way.

"We have advised Diageo management of the result and also confirmed that our campaign is now formally at an end."

In July an estimated 20,000 people marched through Kilmarnock to support the campaign to keep the factories open.

The campaign had also seen Scottish Finance Secretary John Swinney present bosses at the firm with alternative proposals, which would have seen production continue at Port Dundas and the creation of another factory in Kilmarnock.

But these failed to persuade the company to change its plan.