Unilever Caribbean Lim­it­ed has is­sued re­trench­ment no­tices to em­ploy­ees from its man­u­fac­tur­ing di­vi­sion. This comes af­ter Unilever sold its Spreads busi­ness as part of its re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise in 2018. 

The fol­low­ing is a press re­lease Unilever:

With its third-par­ty sup­ply agree­ment set to end on Ju­ly 31, Unilever Caribbean Lim­it­ed (UCL) has is­sued no­tices of re­trench­ment to its em­ploy­ees from the man­u­fac­tur­ing di­vi­sion. This will take ef­fect on Ju­ly 31st, 2022.

Af­ter Unilever sold its Spreads busi­ness in 2018, UCL as part of its re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise en­tered in­to a four-year sup­ply agree­ment with a Third Par­ty. This arrange­ment was the re­sult of ex­haus­tive analy­ses of the cur­rent op­er­a­tions and var­i­ous re­struc­tur­ing strate­gies.

Now that the sup­ply agree­ment has ex­pired, the com­pa­ny, un­for­tu­nate­ly, has no op­tion but to let go the em­ploy­ees of the man­u­fac­tur­ing di­vi­sion.

Be­fore in­sti­tut­ing this re­trench­ment ex­er­cise, UCL en­gaged in ex­ten­sive con­sul­ta­tions with the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU), the rec­og­nized ma­jor­i­ty union for work­ers em­ployed by the com­pa­ny. These in-depth dis­cus­sions were meant to reach a mu­tu­al­ly agree­able out­come, if at all pos­si­ble, in the in­ter­est of all par­ties, es­pe­cial­ly the af­fect­ed work­ers.

The Com­pa­ny will con­tin­ue to pri­ori­tise the safe­ty of all per­son­nel, plant and equip­ment and will con­tin­ue to ac­tive­ly pur­sue the well-be­ing of the peo­ple and the op­er­a­tions of the com­pa­ny. UCL will abide by and op­er­ate in ac­cor­dance with all le­gal oblig­a­tions in all mat­ters re­lat­ing to this de­ci­sion.

The com­pa­ny wish­es to ex­press its deep ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the ser­vice and con­tri­bu­tion made by its em­ploy­ees over the past years.