Wednesday 29 June 2011
Flashmobs target London Supermarkets over Thanet Earth sweatshop exploitation
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Unite flashmobbers sing and dance. It's a greenwash dream but it could be turning into a nightmare for Thanet Earth
Unite flashmobbers sing and dance. It's a greenwash dream but it could be turning into a nightmare for Thanet Earth
Friday 17 June 2011
Guerilla Karaoke Hits Sweatshop Supermarkets in East London
Guerilla musical flashmobs hit London 'sweatshop' supermarkets
* Footage to come!*
Sainsbury's, Marks and Spencers, and Tesco stores in East London were occupied by climate justice and trade union activists protesting alleged abuse of workers at Kent greenhouse growers Thanet Earth.
The salad giant supplies supermarkets with tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers all year round.
The activists dressed in green sang a version of US pop star Katy Perry's Teenage Dream, titled 'Greenwash Dream'. Lyrics reference the Ethical Trading Initiative, hydroponics, casualisation, agencies taking bribes for work, sacking of union leaders and the need for workers rights and permanent contracts.
(Photo by Guy Smallman http://www.guysmallman.com/)
Unite the Union, which has members at Thanet Earth has submitted a body of evidence to the Gangmasters Licensing Authority including accounts of years of employment without contracts, discrimination against workers taking holidays, denial of holiday pay and paid holidays, summary dismissals, bullying and union busting.
Armed with a portable amp, green wigs, cuddly peppers, and a dance routine, they serenaded shoppers and held up Thanet Earth tomatoes re-labelled 'Sweatshop Greenwash Tomatoes'.
Passers-by applauded the group as management attempted to block a camerawoman from filming.
“Our action had an immediate effect – one shopper at M&S said she would boycott the company until they put a stop to exploitation of workers at Thanet Earth”, said activist Anna Evans from Clapton.
Following a “Race to the Bottom' protest outside M&S's flagship store in Oxford Street last month the company removed all references to Thanet Earth from its' products for a week.
Unite the Union activists have called a week of direct action targeting Thanet Earth buyers Sainsbury's, Tesco, M&S and Asda from June 27th-July 2nd. 'Secret Shopper' flashmobs, 'races to the bottom', store occupations, and phone and email blockades are planned.
ENDS
Photos and footage available on request.
For interviews with Thanet Earth workers call: Ewa Jasiewicz, organiser, South East Region, on 07900 160 851
1.Thanet Earth is part of the Fresca Group Ltd. Other companies growing at Thanet Earth are Dutch firms Rainbow Growers Group, Kaaij Greenhouses and A&A.
2.The agencies employed at Thanet Earth are Kent Staff, HRGO, Worldwide Recruitment and Red Eagle.
3.Most of the major supermarkets in the UK are signatories to the Ethical Trading Initiative base-code which states regular employment must be provided and free association and union organisation facilitated
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Lyrics and link to original :
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=katy+perry+teenage+dream&aq=f
Greenwash Dream
You think youre green but,
You don't give us workers rights
You think youre caring
Without any real contracts
I know you rent me
You let our wages come down, right down
You say you're green but
You dont grow your veg in soil
You say you care but you leave us in doubt and toil
You promised locals jobs but you never ever gave, never gave
Lets get out of flexi work
Nothing sure
Just graft
We can work until we die
No contract
We'll be temps forever!
You make me,
feel like Im living a Greenwash Dream
You work me to the bone
I don't sleep
Youre spinning ethics but you always backtrack, yeah you always
backtrack
E-T-I
Youre all ignoring it
We dont lie
We're getting hardest hit
This is Real
We need our rights and per-ma-nent con-tracts, per-ma-nent contracts
Taking back-handers
Thats what some agencies do
Sack union leaders,
For standing right up to you
We're gonna fight back
The race to the bottom hurts
All of us
Lets go all the way on pay
No wage cuts, just fair deals
We need Just Transition now
Local food, workers rights and contracts
You make me,
feel like Im living a Greenwash Dream
You work me to the bone
I don't sleep
Youre spinning ethics but you always backtrack, yeah you always
backtrack
E-T-I
Youre all ignoring it
We dont lie
We're getting hardest hit
This is Real
We need our rights and per-ma-nent con-tracts, per-ma-nent contracts
Gonna get my hands racing
On the packhouse line
Be your greenwash dream tonight
When you casualize my life
And outsource our strife
Be your greenwash dream tonight
Yoooooooooooooou
You make me
Feel like Im living a greenwash dream
You work us to the bone
I don't sleep
Youre spinning ethics
But you always backtrack, yeah you always backtrack
E-T-I
Youre all ignoring it
We dont lie
We're getting hardest hit
This is Real
We need our rights and per-ma-nent con-tracts, per-ma-nent contracts
Gonna get my hands racing
On the packhouse line
Be your greenwash dream tonight
When you casualize my life
And outsource our strife
Be your greenwash dream tonight, tonight, tonight
Friday 10 June 2011
Week of Action Monday June 27th - Saturday July 2nd
Stop Sweatshop Greenwash at Thanet Earth Week of Action!
(Race to the Bottom outside M&S Flagship store in Oxford Street. Following just one protest, the company took all references to Thanet Earth off their packaging. The brand is back on now but it shows how vulnerable supermarkets are to public pressure).
June 27th-July 2nd will see a week of action against Kent-based Supermarket salad supplier Thanet Earth.
Thanet Earth is the biggest greenhouse complex in the UK, covering an area the size of 80 football pitches. Thanet Earth supplies Asda, Marks and Spencers, Sainsburys and Tesco with tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers.
When opened in 2008, Thanet Earth promised 550 local jobs in one of the most deprived areas of the UK. Instead the site employs 90% casualised migrant workers through 4 agencies in a system of constant precarity. Most workers have no contracts, bribes to secure shifts have been reported, and union members who have attempted to organise have found themselves out of work. Investigations by the Gangmasters Licensing Authority and Ethical Trading Initiative are ongoing.
When Unite the Union’s organising campaign secured over 65% membership, Thanet Earth responded by sending in another agency, diluting membership, cutting hours, and forcing workers into calling every day to find out if they have work. Members have branded this a union busting move.
Thanet Earth's 'Green' credentials are also questionable. Despite 'Made in Kent' looking appealing for conscious shoppers as a low food-miles alternative to Senegalese or Morroccan tomatoes, infact growing vegetables in chemicals and fibre glass, all year-round, under artificial lights and acres of plastic, and using massive amounts of water, even if rainwater - as this does not replenish the local water table and local farmers - is not an example of green growing. Supply chains stretched by lorry transport around the country are still carbon intensive and undermine localised production and delivery.
The 'factory vegetable' model serving carbon-intensive supermarkets also undermines fair prices and ramps up competition for local farmers. Whichever way you look at it, whether as the future of 'food security' or 'sustainable intensification' Thanet Earth fails the test on both upholding human rights and climate justice.
The 'factory vegetable' model serving carbon-intensive supermarkets also undermines fair prices and ramps up competition for local farmers. Whichever way you look at it, whether as the future of 'food security' or 'sustainable intensification' Thanet Earth fails the test on both upholding human rights and climate justice.
Enough is enough! Unite members have called a week of direct action targeting Thanet Earth, Asda, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, M&S and agency HRGO to push for union rights and recognition and an end to casualisation.
From Monday June 27th- Saturday July 2nd , ‘Secret Shopper’ flashmobs, store occupations, pickets, ‘Races to the Bottom’, and phone and email blockades are planned – see http://www.stopsweatshopgreenwash.blogspot.com/
Thanet Earth and the supermarkets accepting sweatshop veg will also be a target in the June 30th day of strike solidarity action in London.
Join in the fun! Pick a store, call your friends, we’ll send you leaflets, and get an action going in your area. Email
stopsweatshopgreenwash@gmail.com or call 07900 160 851 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting 07900 160 851 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
For more info and materials see: http://www.stopsweatshopgreenwash.blogspot.com/
Thursday 2 June 2011
Campaign for workers rights at Thanet Earth
If you think that buying local is buying ethical, think again....
Welcome to the new Stop Sweatshop Greenwash at Thanet Earth campaign made up of Unite the Union activists and members and local supportive groups.
Thanet Earth is the UK's biggest Greenhouse complex and part of the Fresca Group Ltd. Other companies growing at Thanet Earth are Dutch firms Rainbow Growers Group, Kaaij Greenhouses and A&A.
Serious allegations raised by the workforce have been submitted to the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, the government body responsible for regulating agency practices.
The alleged offences include: agency employees in positions of authority taking cash and gifts for work; systematic denial of paid holidays and holiday pay; discrimination against workers taking holidays who are then denied work; and years of employment on a casualised basis, without fixed contracts.
Further, requests for union recognition have been denied by Thanet Earth which claims to be an ethical employer and claims to be one of the greenest employers in the sector.
In peak season some 300 people work at the futuristic facility in Thanet where cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes are grown, picked and packed, supplying the UK's supermarket with salad crops.
Current buyers are Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s and Asda.
Workers at Thanet Earth claim they are treated like sweatshop labour. Some union activists have found themselves out of work after having identified themselves as union members, other have seen their hours cut to just two days or week, meaning that they cannot continue to work at the site and have left of their own accord in search of more permanent work.
In the run up to Thanet Earth harvesting operation in 2009, the company promised 500 jobs for local people in one of the most depressed regions of the UK. Almost two years on, the vast majority of the workforce still have no permanent contract, no job security and work through four different agencies in a system of permanent casualisation.
In 2010 Thanet Earth introduced a second agency – HRGO – into the pack house, creating more competition and insecurity for workers and resulting in the scrapping of the weekly rota system and forcing workers to telephone their agency on a daily basis for work.
Thanet Earth's use of agencies has created a policy of precarity with work and the denial of its availability used as a weapon against the workforce. Keep your head down - you'll get work, raise it up and you'll be down the road is the message many workers have received. Thanet Earth is controlling more than Just-in-Time Production with Just in Time Labour, it is locking out unions and creating a McJob culture of exploitation which is driving down conditions for all workers and setting a new, lower bar of casualisation that will exploit all workers no matter where they come from.
Unions, Supermarkets and the general public are the key to winning this campaign - Asda, Tescos, Sainsburys and Marks and Spencers can stop this race to the bottom and secure rights for workers at Thanet Earth and other suppliers by enforcing the ethical conditions in their supply chains that they have committed themselves to under the Ethical Trading Initiative.
Welcome to the new Stop Sweatshop Greenwash at Thanet Earth campaign made up of Unite the Union activists and members and local supportive groups.
Thanet Earth is the UK's biggest Greenhouse complex and part of the Fresca Group Ltd. Other companies growing at Thanet Earth are Dutch firms Rainbow Growers Group, Kaaij Greenhouses and A&A.
Serious allegations raised by the workforce have been submitted to the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, the government body responsible for regulating agency practices.
The alleged offences include: agency employees in positions of authority taking cash and gifts for work; systematic denial of paid holidays and holiday pay; discrimination against workers taking holidays who are then denied work; and years of employment on a casualised basis, without fixed contracts.
Further, requests for union recognition have been denied by Thanet Earth which claims to be an ethical employer and claims to be one of the greenest employers in the sector.
In peak season some 300 people work at the futuristic facility in Thanet where cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes are grown, picked and packed, supplying the UK's supermarket with salad crops.
Current buyers are Tesco, Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury’s and Asda.
Workers at Thanet Earth claim they are treated like sweatshop labour. Some union activists have found themselves out of work after having identified themselves as union members, other have seen their hours cut to just two days or week, meaning that they cannot continue to work at the site and have left of their own accord in search of more permanent work.
In the run up to Thanet Earth harvesting operation in 2009, the company promised 500 jobs for local people in one of the most depressed regions of the UK. Almost two years on, the vast majority of the workforce still have no permanent contract, no job security and work through four different agencies in a system of permanent casualisation.
In 2010 Thanet Earth introduced a second agency – HRGO – into the pack house, creating more competition and insecurity for workers and resulting in the scrapping of the weekly rota system and forcing workers to telephone their agency on a daily basis for work.
Thanet Earth's use of agencies has created a policy of precarity with work and the denial of its availability used as a weapon against the workforce. Keep your head down - you'll get work, raise it up and you'll be down the road is the message many workers have received. Thanet Earth is controlling more than Just-in-Time Production with Just in Time Labour, it is locking out unions and creating a McJob culture of exploitation which is driving down conditions for all workers and setting a new, lower bar of casualisation that will exploit all workers no matter where they come from.
Unions, Supermarkets and the general public are the key to winning this campaign - Asda, Tescos, Sainsburys and Marks and Spencers can stop this race to the bottom and secure rights for workers at Thanet Earth and other suppliers by enforcing the ethical conditions in their supply chains that they have committed themselves to under the Ethical Trading Initiative.
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