A night picket at Jacob’s
The strike at Jacob’s cracker and biscuit factory in Aintree, Liverpool, looks set to escalate. Around 700 workers have entered their fourth week of strikes over pay.
Strikers are waiting for confirmation from GMB union officials to increase their strike days from four to five days a week.
In the lead-up to the busy Christmas period, this is the sort of pressure that could make the employers crack.
Earlier on in the week strikers had spontaneously organised a lively picket of the company’s head office in Chiswick, telling the bosses where they could stick their paltry pay offer of just over 4 percent.
Jacob’s is one of the longest-established and biggest employers in Liverpool. Liverpool dockers have made solidarity visits to the large and lively Jacob’s picket lines.
Refuse workers in Richmond, south London have walked out after being offered a below-inflation pay rise.
Workers voted by an impressive 98 percent to strike. After announcing that they would strike the members of the GMB union, who are outsourced to Serco, were handed an improved offer by the company.
But workers stood strong and voted on Monday to turn this offer down and walked out on the same day. The strike is planned to continue for three weeks.
Around 60 workers at Quorn Foods meat-free paste production factory near Billingham were set to escalate to an all-out and indefinite strike from Thursday this week.
The firm refuses to improve a pay offer of 4 percent plus a £1,000 “bonus”. The strikers are in the Unite union. They include fermenter and chiller technicians, maintenance and laboratory staff and effluent treatment staff who are vital to the running of the factory.
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