Managers at Greencore, the UK’s biggest sandwich-maker, have flown to Hungary to hire staff despite the company benefiting from £107m of government funding designed to create more jobs for the people of Northamptonshire.
Greencore, which makes 430 million sandwiches a year for Marks & Spencer, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Asda and others, said very few local people had applied for jobs at its new £30m Northampton factory so on Monday executives began a recruitment drive in Budapest.
Allyson Russell, Greencore’s human resources director, said: “In Northampton, we do have a problem in that there is very low unemployment. There aren’t enough people around and it is not always the kind of work people have wanted to do.”
Russell told BBC Northampton that Greencore recruiters flew to Hungary to begin an eastern European hiring drive.
“Ideally, we would be flooded with applications, but actually we are having to work really hard to find people who will come and work for us,” she told the BBC last week in a story followed up by the Daily Mail.
The new recruits, for roles including sandwich making as well as cleaners, porters and quality controllers, are being hired for Greencore’s new £30m factory, which is due to open in 2016. Greencore’s adverts state recruits will be required to work nights and weekends as the factory makes sandwiches round the clock.
About 10% of the jobs will pay the minimum wage of £6.50 an hour for those aged 21 and over. The minimum wage in Hungary is 101,500 forints (£259) a month, according to the Federation of International Employers.
News of the Hungarian recruitment drive came as it emerged that Greencore is named as a big potential recruiter in Northamptonshire’s strategic economic plan. More than £100m of government funding has been pumped into the Northamptonshire county council growth plan with the aim of creating “at least 2,000 jobs” by 2021. The company pointed out that it had not received any direct funding, but a spokesman acknowledged that it would benefit from the scheme.
Greencore, which already employs 1,100 in the town, said it had tried hard to recruit new staff in the local area by “advertising for a number of months on a large banner outside the site” but had failed to get enough applicants.
A spokesman said the company had also sponsored a local jobs fair and had hired 50 people at a recruitment event in nearby Corby, where a sandwich factory has recently closed down with the loss of hundreds of jobs.
Margot Parker, Ukip MEP for the east Midlands, said: “Why is Greencore recruiting 300 workers from Hungary to open a factory in Northampton, when 500 people in Corby lost jobs doing same job this year?
“It looks like a prime example of job displacement, facilitated by our membership of the EU and a company which wants the cheapest labour available.
“It is hard to justify saying there is lack of skilled people in the area when 500 workers just up the road doing the same job recently lost their jobs and are willing to work.”
It is not the first time a UK company said it was forced to look overseas for people to do jobs in Britain. In 2007, FirstGroup opened a bus driving school near Warsaw and still hires Polish drivers including 20 posted to Aberdeen earlier this year. Clothing company New Look once actively sought out Polish managers.
In 2012, Greencore was forced to compensate 400 workers at its Hull factory after an employment tribunal ruled it had unfairly limited their overtime and holiday pay after staff had volunteered to temporarily suspend their benefits to help the then-struggling company.
Greencore made operating profits of £76.5m on sales of £1.2bn last year.
One person, who said they had been working at Greencore for eight years, said the only advantage of working for the company was “it’s better than being unemployed”.
They added: “This year I have seen this company bring grown men and women to the brink of tears at the festive period by telling them that they have to work Christmas Eve, Boxing Day, New Year’s Eve – nightshift so they can wish each other a happy 2014 across a lasagne, and New Year’s Day – all with hours of notice after they had made plans with their families. Mostly immigrants though, so what does it matter?
“I’ve seen people bullied into working 12 hours a day – seven days a week.”
The company declined to comment on the anonymous Glassdoor reviews.
