Twinings leaves many employees fuming
Posted by Cath Everett in Strategy on Mon, 09/06/2010 - 14:34
Staff who are due to lose their jobs at an iconic British tea company have reacted angrily to demands that they train workers from overseas scheduled to replace them next year.
Twinings' bosses announced last November that they intended to close the company's factory in North Shields with the loss of 263 jobs. The aim was to transfer production to either Poland or China by September 2011 as part of an efficiency drive.
At the time, 22 MPs signed a Commons' motion condemning the move, although the campaign was unsuccessful. Some 4,000 people have since joined a Facebook group in a bid to save the plant, however.
Workers told the Daily Mail that, when the closure was first announced, volunteers would be offered the chance to extend their contracts for six months by going over to Poland to help train workers there.
But staff have now been told that, as of next week, they will be required to train two waves of employees from Poland visiting North Shields for three weeks at a time.
One employee who asked not to be named said: "It's rubbing salt in the wound because they are taking our jobs yet we have to train them. There's a lot of animosity here towards them. People are very angry."
Usdaw union rep Jayne Shotton said: "The workers at Twinings had resigned themselves to the fact their jobs were going to Poland. But I think to bring Polish workers over here and expect them to be trained by Twinings workers who are losing their jobs is like rubbing their noses in it."
Twinings had not consulted with the union on the issue, but Usdaw would be raising the matter with the company, she added.
A spokeswoman at the firm confirmed that the contentious situation was to take place. "Next week Twinings will be welcoming a handful of new employees from Poland to the North Shields site. They will be visiting to familiarise themselves with the tea-making process and receive training."
While the company recognised that it was a difficult time for staff at North Shields and appreciated some people would prefer not to participate, many employees were willing to do so, she added.
"A significant number of our employees have also expressed interest in the opportunity to train Polish employees at the new site in Poland. We will be making further details available to staff about this initiative in the coming weeks," the spokeswoman said.
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Twinings Training Dilemma
There is an interesting lesson here on dealing with change and challenges - I'm told that the Chinese word for "crisis" is made up of two characters "wei" and "chi" meaning "danger" and "opportunity". I can certainly appreciate and understand the animosity and anger of the Twinings employees having been involved in a similar situation a few years ago when the hotel marketing group I worked for centralised their European operations to Germany resulting in the UK reservations team being made redundant (myself included). I was asked to train the new consultants and my first reaction was "the cheek of it"! However, I was uncertain of my next move and decided to use it as an opportunity to further my skills and it really paid off. Some of the benefits included:
I didn't know about the "danger + opportunity" reference at the time, but on reflection it is very fitting. I'm now really enjoying my L&D Manager role sitting here in the Middle East for a multi-national company and I'm not sure that would have been the case without the "crisis".....
Best of luck to all those Twining employees who are affected by this closure.