COMMENT Workers deserve better in private equity deals. As the trade union currently dealing with 660 job cuts at private equity-owned Burton’s Foods, we understand the real-world effects on our members. Representing, as we did, the Gate Gourmet workers who were summarily sacked in a car park or canteen by a private equity-owned company, we are no strangers to controversy. This is why we believe the time has come for specific new legal protections for workers in private equity deals and an extension of information and consultation rights for the workforce before deals are completed.
Our members’ experience of private equity is all too often job uncertainty, poorer pay, pensions put at risk and even unemployment as factories and plants are closed. Their experience is supported by independent reports commissioned by Unite. These have dissected private equity’s claims on job creation, describing them as “worthless”; and on investment returns, saying investors do “worse than if they invested in the stock market”. We have seen what the private equiteers did to workers at Birds Eye and the AA and what they are doing at Burton’s Foods.
