Mondelez

As part of the post-Cadbury European chocolate business shake-up – which has triggered ongoing industrial action in Belgium (see previous story) – Kraft has announced production transfers and job cuts in Austria as well.

Workers at the Kraft confectionery factory in Halle, Belgium, have extended their strike against the proposed elimination of up to 100 jobs at their factory - originally announced for 48 hours - to run a full week, ending on the morning of June 27.

A 3-hour warning strike on April 27 helped to secure a wage agreement between the German foodworkers union NGG and Kraft Foods management.

Kraft has moved up the international union agenda – a necessary development in response to the company’s rapid international growth.

The Service and Food Workers' Union of New Zealand (SFWU) reports strong membership approval (95%) for a new agreement at the Dunedin chocolate plant. The agreement gives a 4% increase in wages, improved shift allowances and enhanced parental and bereavement leave.

Kraft unions around the world have condemned the brutal suppression of permanent employment for long-serving employees at the company's biscuit factory in Vantaa, Finland, where 24 permanent workers have been handed dismissal notices, of which 19 have been told they can return to employment… on a call-in basis with no guaranteed hours.

On March 16, Kraft nonchalantly announced - in violation of the prescribed procedure - the closing of its Madrid Business Center with the elimination of 70 jobs. Spanish unions are questioning whether Kraft was less than rigorous in its "due diligence" when it contracted branded cheese production at Quesería Menorquina to the now-bankrupt Nueva Rumasa.

Some 160 Spanish workers producing Kraft-branded products are at risk of joining the growing line of unemployed former Kraft workers.

Or is Kraft - with additional leverage over suppliers since it swallowed Cadbury - simply racing to complete the massive cost savings it promised investors would be achieved by 2012 through the Cadbury deal?

Malin Klingzell-Brulin and Gunnar Brulin, journalists for the Swedish Food Workers' monthly Mål & Medel, have written a book we can recommend gladly, not only to trade unionists and workers within the global food system, but to all concerned with the most fundamental of human rights, namely the right to food. Food for Thought: on food, power and human rights, tackles a theme - power in the world food system, that has been written about from many points of view.