Photo of Sandwich by Arnold Gatilao
Executives for Greencore, the largest maker of sandwiches in the United Kingdom, went to Hungary to recruit employees for a new factory opening in Northhamptonshire. Some observers are complaining because Greencore was the recipient of £107 million in government funding to use to create more jobs for the residents of Northhamptonshire.
Greencore produces 430 million sandwiches every year and sells them to companies such as Marks & Spencer, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Asda and others. The company said that despite looking for a local work force for its new £30 million facility, very few people from the area even applied for jobs there. That is why they continued the search for workers in Budapest.
Greencore’s director of human services, Allyson Russell, 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.”
“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 added. “Is there no one left in Britain who can make a sandwich?”
The company already hires 1,199 in Northampton. They asserted that they had tried quite hard to recruit new workers from the region by “advertising for a number of months on a large banner outside the site” but they failed to get enough applicants to fill all the positions. They also sponsored a job fair and hired 50 people at a recruitment event held in Corby nearby, where a sandwich factory had recently closed, leaving hundreds unemployed.
Ukip MEP for the east Midlands, Morgot Parker asked:
“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.”
