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Unite slams Premier Inn owner for leaving workers rights group
Unite has accused Premier Inn’s parent Whitbread of snubbing its workforce by pulling out of the Ethical Trading Initiative.
The union said the decision by the hospitality giant, which also owns Costa Coffee, was a slap in the face to its 50,000 strong UK workforce, its customers and also to workers in its overseas supply chain.
Whitbread is leaving just18 months after it was granted foundation stage membership of ETI, which is an alliance of companies, NGOs and trade unions that promotes respect for workers’ rights. Members include the Body Shop, Co-op and H&M.
"Whitbread’s resignation from the ETI is a snub to the workforce," said Rhys McCarthy, Unite national officer.
"We had high hopes that its membership would open the door to better union relations in the notoriously anti-union and exploitative UK hospitality sector.
"It is deeply disappointing that Whitbread would rather pull the plug on its application to become an accredited ETI member, than work with Unite to become a genuinely ethic and sustainable employer to its UK workforce.
"For over a year we sought to secure a union access agreement, which would have allowed union officials to meet with workers to discuss the benefits of trade union membership, in line with ETI base code 2, as well as the company’s own human rights’ policy.
"Whitbread’s UK workers have just as much a right to join and form a trade union of their choosing as workers in the company’s overseas supply chain. To suggest otherwise is absurd.
"The UK hospitality industry is fundamentally unethical. It is built on low pay, long hours and exploitation; workers have few rights and little power. It’s time for the industry to stop seeing unions as ‘the enemy within’ and start working with us to change and improve the way it operates."
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Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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