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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16 – WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2014
£1.60 Number 40,476
www.birminghampost.co.uk
Cadbury staff
told ‘change
your ways or
hit the road’
US bosses hand Bournville workers ultimatum telling
them to demonstrate new ‘behaviours’ – or move on
EXCLUSIVE
Jon Griffin
Business Staff
jon.griffi[email protected]
C
ADBURY workers in Birmingham have been handed an ultimatum by the company’s American
bosses:
change
or
take
redundancy.
Mondelez International, which now
owns the landmark plant in Bournville,
Chocolate company employees are
being told they must “demonstrate a
new set of behaviours” – and anyone
who doesn’t want to be part of a process called “High Performing Bournville”
is invited to take redundancy.
Neil Chapman, manufacturing director chocolate UK for Mondelez, said in
the document that costs in Birming> Cadbury’s Bournville factory
ham are twice as high as other factories
has sent a document to staff warning in Europe.
that a “transformation” of working
» Full story: Page 2
practices will lead to fewer staff.
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2 BIRMINGHAM POST THURSDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2014
NEWS
Inside
Letters...........................30-31
Comment......................27-33
Commercial Property......37
Legal...................................36
Finance..............................35
Personal Finance..............38
Manufacturing..................39
Sport..............................46-48
Online
Cadbury workers told
‘change your behaviour
or leave the company’
EXCLUSIVE
Jon Griffin
Business Staff
[email protected]
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The recycled
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M
ORE than 1,000 Cadbury
workers at Bournville have
been told to adapt to change
– or see their jobs moved overseas.
Mondelez International, which
now owns the iconic plant which was
founded in the city in 1879, is
demanding huge changes from the
workforce.
Staff have been told by their American bosses that chocolate production at the historic Birmingham factory could be switched to other
Mondelez International sites if they
don’t adapt to change.
In a confrontational document,
seen by the Birmingham Post, workers were told that they must ‘fundamentally’ change their behaviour in
the factory – or apply for voluntary
redundancy.
Mondelez says the ‘true home of
Cadbury’ must ‘go through a transformation journey’ to secure investment of £75 million in new state of
the art production equipment.
A document entitled “High Performing Bournville is this for me?”,
warns: “If we don’t change we will be
unable to grow and develop our
workforce to succeed to be the very
best and therefore fail to become
supplier of choice.”
And it adds: “In order to move to a
High Performing Bournville, we need
everyone at all levels to demonstrate
a new set of behaviours.”
The ultimatum to the workforce
comes just six months after Mondelez boss Maurizio Brusadelli told
the Post that the Bournville factory
was lagging behind its European
counterparts with ageing infrastructure and manufacturing costs double
that of sister plants.
The American parent group
unveiled a £75 million programme of
investment in January which will see
old production lines replaced with
new state of the art equipment. The
firm has warned that the cash outlay
>>Cadbury owner Mondelez is demanding huge changes of the workforce
is dependent on a successful conclusion to consultations underway with
unions on the productivity gap. But
the document – which warns that
jobs must go – has sparked fears
throughout the factory that the proposed changes could cause huge disruption to their lives.
A worker, who asked not to be
named, said: “Loyal, dedicated and
hard-working employees are entering into a set of discussions that will
decide whether they fit the behaviour profile of the Mondelez/Kraft
employee of the future.
“The way they will work, shift patterns, terms and conditions, and
contracts of employment are all
under scrutiny and the workforce is
extremely worried.
“Employees’ whole lives may have
to change, people working days may
also have to work nights, and viceversa. Holidays may have to be
moved to accommodate production
needs.
“There is a theory among the
majority of Bournville employees
that Mondelez/Kraft only ever wanted the Cadbury brand and reputation, not the people, the site or the
heritage.”
Employees’ whole
lives may have to
change, people
working days may
also have to work
nights, and viceversa
Cadbury worker
The Post understands that unions
are currently in talks with management about the document.
In April, Maurizio Brusadelli, at
that time Mondelez President for the
UK and Ireland, told the Post: “We
are not competitive today – to be
competitive we need to invest. We
have to go back, hopefully invest
after the consultations, and then we
can talk about what is next.
“Bournville can be one of the best
plants in the world for manufacturing. To do that we have to change
and we need the money to invest to
create lines that are state of the art.
We cannot work with lines that are
40, 50 years old. With this money,
Bournville can be one of the best
manufacturing plants in the world
and competitive with other plants.”
And Neil Chapman, manufacturing director chocolate UK for Mondelez International, said: “Our costs
on the ground down here are twice
as much as others in our sister factories in Europe.
That is manufacturing costs, compared to other sister plants in Europe,
such as Germany.
“We use them as a benchmark.
Before (the Kraft takeover) there was
no-one to compare with.
“There are two sides to manufacturing costs. One: spend less, and
two, drive more volumes through
your plant. If we can reduce our
costs, we will attract more volumes
here and improve our efficiency.”
The document says: “Every single
colleague will be expected to display
the right behaviours and attitudes to
be part of High Performing Bournville.
“We have been clear there will be
fewer colleagues here at the end of
our journey. We will achieve this as
much as possible through MVR
(managed voluntary redundancy)
for those who don’t want to be part
of High Performing Bournville.
“This may require remaining colleagues to move across lines or varied shift patterns – but this will be
dialogued as part of consultation and
with individuals as required.”
Workers are being invited to personal one to one talks to discuss the
document, which asks them to tick
boxes answering Yes, No or Maybe to
a string of questions.
These include: “Are you a team
player with an attitude for playing
your part, getting stuck in and driving performance?”
“Do you want to work in a factory
where you are expected to meet all
compliance requirements and are
held accountable if they are not met?
Do you embrace change? High Performing Bournville will always be
striving to be better.”
»»Comment: Page 27
True scale of city roadworks revealed West Midlands Police Force
BIRMINGHAM’S
‘Golden
Mile’ has been dug up an
astonishing 684 times in the
last five years – an average of
almost three repairs a week.
Broad Street can be
revealed undergoing an endless series of patches, sunken
gratings, uneven paving slabs
and cracks appearing.
Anyone walking or driving
down the road will almost
certainly have faced cones,
fenced off pavements and
traffic light controlled roadworks.
The A45 Coventry Road, a
key artery into the city from
the M42 and Solihull has
been dug up 1,180 times in
the same period, according
to the figures, obtained
under the Freedom of Information Act.
Council officials have
stressed that the scale of
repairs isn’t purely down to
crumbling roads and cracking pavements, with many of
them down to repairing leaking gas mains and water
pipes.
The sheer scale of repairs
has led to calls for greater coordination between all the
utilities and council to try
and avoid the same stretches
of road or pavement continually being dug up.
Last week the Post reported
that West Midlands Police
paid out £2.5 million in exit
packages to 207 police
officers who were forced
into early retirement as part
of the A19 scheme.
The force has asked us to
clarify that the £2.5 million
listed in the annual accounts
was only paid out to civilian
members of staff and not
police officers.
In 2012/13 146 redundant
staff shared out £1.69
million, with one of those
paid out £106,000 and
another receiving a lump
sum of £93,000. A further 61
shared out £857,000 in
2013/14.
Only three of those who
were paid out were compulsory redundancies, with the
remaining 204 volunteering
to go.