Shelves at a supermarket in South Bristol were looking bare as an eight-day strike at the UK's biggest port continues. The Asda store on East Street, Bedminster, appeared to be short on several food and household essentials yesterday (August 22).
Empty boxes in the fresh produce aisles could be seen, together with sparsely stacked cabinets in the freezer section. Bananas and Yorkshire puddings were amongst those foods which were running out while shelves of toilet roll were also looking empty, in an echo of the panic-buying widely reported at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020.
But an Asda spokesman insisted that the bare shelves had nothing to do with the port strike, as the firm "does not bring food or groceries through [Felixstowe]". He suggested instead that the products had simply sold out, or the shelves were being cleaned.
An Asda spokesman said: "None of those products would be impacted by strikes at Felixstowe as we don’t bring food or other groceries through there. It looks like selling through or shelf cleaning."
Almost two thousand workers at Felixstowe in Suffolk walked out for eight days on Sunday (August 21), the first industrial action at Britain’s biggest container port since 1989. Unite members including crane drivers and stevedores are in dispute with port operators over pay.
Nearly half of the country’s incoming containers arrive at Felixstowe, with union leaders admitting that the strike will have a “huge effect on the UK’s supply chain and will also cause severe disruption to international maritime trade”.
Unite claims that Felixstowe Dock and Railway Company has paid out £198 million in dividends since 2017, most of which has gone to parent firms like holding company CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd, registered in Hong Kong.
Felixstowe’s accounts for 2020 show the company made pre-tax profits of £61 million at the height of the pandemic, while also paying a dividend of £99 million. The company has offered the waterfront workers a 7% pay rise, but Unite has rejected this as “significantly below” the rate of inflation.
In a statement, general secretary Sharon Graham said: “Felixstowe Docks and its associated companies have been prioritising profits and dividends instead of giving their workers a decent share of the pie.
“Instead the company is syphoning off tens of millions of pounds offshore to its Hong Kong-based parent company, almost every year. So Hong Kong shareholders are getting a bonanza pay-out while the company weeps ‘crocodile tears’ claiming that they can’t pay a decent pay rise here and essentially asking workers to accept a pay cut.”
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