Unite and ASDA Launch Ground Breaking Initiative to Improve Working Conditions for Thousands

LONDON, March 4, 2010 - Unite the Union and ASDA supermarket chain, will today (4th March) launch
a groundbreaking joint initiative to end discrimination and unfair treatment
across the supermarket's 29 meat and poultry suppliers, employing 6000
workers.

Unite and ASDA have worked together, including meeting with all 29 of the
suppliers to the supermarket, which range from major multi-nationals to local
suppliers. The aim has been to move to a new business model of supply chain
management which is efficient, effective and crucially which ensures workers
are treated fairly and equally.

Unite has criticised the way in which supermarkets abuse their market
power to drive down costs along the supply chain, leading to a two-tier
labour market, with agency workers, overwhelmingly migrant, on poorer
conditions of employment and the directly-employed workers, overwhelmingly
indigenous, on better conditions of employment. That structural
discrimination is currently the subject of the first inquiry by the Equality
and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) which is due to report in March on the
UK's multi-billion pound meat industry in England and Wales.

The work by Unite the Union and the EHRC has established clear evidence
of unfair treatment of workers and sometimes serious division in workforces
that can damage social cohesion in local communities. ASDA has itself
examined in detail the practices in its supply chain, deciding that its
customers would demand nothing less than action to ensure fair and equal
treatment of all workers.

Central to the joint initiative by Unite and ASDA are agency workers and
the directly-employed being paid the same rate of pay. A second key objective
has been to maximise direct employment, ending the sometimes semi-permanent
status of agency workers with, in future, agency working being undertaken
only to meet seasonal fluctuations and no longer a way of life. In addition,
in their dialogue with the 29 suppliers, Unite and ASDA have identified
unacceptable practices which ASDA has acted to bring to an end.

Unite's Deputy General Secretary, Jack Dromey today said:

"We warmly welcome ASDA's pioneering initiative which sends a clear
message that one of Britain's biggest supermarkets is determined to put
ethical principles into practice. ASDA's customers can be confident that
there really is no place like ASDA.

"For years, supermarkets have driven down costs along their supply chain
with tens of thousands of workers paying the price with discriminatory and
unfair practices. It is wrong to exploit migrant agency workers on poorer
conditions of employment and it is wrong to undercut directly employed
workers on better conditions of employment. That divides workforces and
damages social cohesion in local communities.

"The EHRC will report shortly on the outcome of its first ever inquiry
into structural discrimination in the supermarket supply chain in the UK.
ASDA has not waited, but instead has acted. It is a matter of regret that,
for most of ASDA's competitors, the word "ethical" is but a logo on the
letterhead which is not put seriously into practice."

Contact: Ciaran Naidoo on +44(0)7768-931-315