The Transport and General Workers Union yesterday issued a statement backing ‘the Sainsbury family’s hostile position to the private equity bid for the supermarket chain’.
The union also pledged to continue to ‘oppose the bid with every means at its disposal’.
The TGWU has 25,000 members in Sainsbury’s employed in retail stores and distribution centres ‘making the union legitimate stakeholders in the current bidding process’.
TGWU national organiser for food and agriculture, Brian Revell, ‘who has kept in touch with Sainsbury’s’, said the private equity cartel of CVC, Blackstone and Texas Pacific will borrow the money to buy the shares and will, if successful, almost certainly sell the land and property.
He said: ‘This is not wealth creation but a process of wealth extraction as finances are manipulated to maximise profit.
‘The good work carried out by Justin King and our members among other workers over the last two years will be jeopardised by people who have no long term interest in the business.’
Praising the Sainsbury family for taking the stance they have, Revell urged other shareholders not to sell out to the private equity bidders.
Instead, he said they should continue to support the recovery programme which has doubled share value over the past two years.
Revell said the union will be raising this issue with the Competition Commission.
He made it clear the TGWU believed the ‘stability created after the Morrison’s takeover of Safeway’s’ will be ‘undermined by this new force which seeks to have temporary presence on our high street’.
Revell stressed: ‘This will send a tremor of fear through farmers and food processors who already have difficulty maintaining profits in a very competitive environment.
‘This bid should be thoroughly scrutinised by all stakeholders. It will have negative impacts on workers, customers, suppliers and the national interest.’
Revell said that the ‘ongoing debate on private equity’ must conclude with legislation to regulate their power which took account of all stakeholders ‘not just the privileged elite who are partners in these firms’.
Noting that the issue of Sainsbury’s pensions had been raised as part of the whole private equity bid situation, Revell said the TGWU will be calling for a meeting with Sainsbury’s Pension Trustees to call for an injection of cash into the pension funds with a view to removing any deficits.
‘This we do as a call on the existing management to ensure pension security into the future,’ he said.