The BBC reported that workers at The Macallan are weighing a potential strike within the distillery’s engineering department. The Macallan strike action is on the ballot because engineers typically work 4 days a week, and the brand’s parent company has pitched the idea of creating new shifts for the department, where they might work for longer shifts and stay on call with no extra pay.
Union Organizer Lesley-Anne MacAskill expressed that the Macallan’s engineers were very important to the distillery’s day-to-day operations.
“Their legitimate concerns about these swift changes and the upheaval caused have been ignored by managers unwilling to seriously engage in negotiations or consider alternatives,” said MacAskill.
The whisky brand’s parent company, Edrington, claimed that the conglomerate made “a number of concessions and compromises” in order to make sure workers had security and flexibility.
According to The Scotsman, GMB Scotland Organizer Lesley-Anne MacAskill said that Edringron’s actions in removing the four-day workweek were “absurd,” especially when other Scotch whisky companies were eliminating work days.
“The workers’ expert opinion should be respected, but their suggestions to deliver the extra cover requested were rejected out of hand and the goal posts repeatedly moved,” MacAskill said in a statement. “Their legitimate concerns about these shift changes and the upheaval caused have been ignored by managers unwilling to seriously engage in negotiations or consider alternatives.”
MacAskill said that the workers all had over 90 years of combined experience together, and that the new scheduling implemented by a manager who joined the company a few weeks ago is “hugely disruptive.”
“It is an extreme course of action to needlessly provoke an industrial dispute by choosing conflict over communication and compromise.”
One might surmise that the new manager asked the Speyside whisky brand’s engineering core to work extra hours due to the current climate. In July, Edrington reported that Macallan admitted a decline of $370 million in revenue, marking a 26% drop in pre-tax profits and a plunge of 10% in core revenue.
“The main challenge in today’s spirits market is to navigate the trend towards premiusation while managing rising costs,” said General Director of Imports and Exports at the Varma Group, Carlos Peralta, in a statement. “Consumers are looking for innovative and high-quality products, but economic pressures are also a reality.”
It could be possible the recent pressures the staff face at The Macallan are a direct reflection of that. The Spirits Business reported that a strike action has been “unanimously backed.”
Edrington appears to be willing to negotiate.
No responses yet