Kraft Foods Bites Into Labor Struggles in Tunisia and Egypt

[xchrom]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/13777/kraft_foods_bites_into_labor_struggles_in_tunisia_and_egypt/


Workers in Egypt and Tunisia, fresh off the Arab Spring protests, are fighting back against Kraft foods for cracking down on union organizing. (Photo by: Ramy Raoof/Flickr/Creative Commons)

Kraft Foods has spread its syrupy slogan, “Make Today Delicious,” around the globe. But today in North Africa, bitter labor struggles at Kraft-affiliated plants in two hotbeds of the Arab Spring reveal that political revolt has failed to overturn the rotten dominion of multinationals.

Workers for Kraft-affiliated plants in both Tunisia and Egypt have charged that workers have faced crackdowns for trying to organize independently. According to the Geneva-based International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF), which represents millions of workers and hundreds of unions worldwide, the nascent Egyptian and Tunisian labor movements face the old challenges of economic and political oppression, as well as the new challenges of post-revolutionary social tumult.

At an Alexandria factory that came under Kraft’s control with the takeover of Cadbury, IUF reported this week, “Kraft has sacked five members of the board of the newly created independent union... following a protest over the non-payment of a government-decreed social allowance.” According to IUF, in order to squelch the union (which is supported by IUF and has enrolled most of the plant's 300 workers) the company flouted both the social allowance policy and basic labor rights, and tried to justify its move by alleging the sacked members had “caused loss to the company by having instigated the protest.”

In its press statement the IUF added that in militating against the union, the plant's management sought “to intimidate the workers and remove those who would fight for their rights and to eliminate the union.”