Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@cnc3.co.tt

Six­teen Nestlé Trinidad and To­ba­go work­ers have been re­trenched while an­oth­er 30 have ac­cept­ed vol­un­tary sep­a­ra­tion pack­ages as the multi­na­tion­al food com­pa­ny moves ahead with re­struc­tur­ing its lo­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion op­er­a­tions.

The com­pa­ny con­firmed yes­ter­day that 46 em­ploy­ees across its sales and ware­hous­ing de­part­ments have been af­fect­ed by the de­ci­sion to in­tro­duce a third-par­ty dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­el, with changes to their em­ploy­ment tak­ing ef­fect be­tween No­vem­ber and De­cem­ber.

The de­vel­op­ment comes as the Oil­fields Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) con­tin­ues ef­forts to save ad­di­tion­al jobs, while un­cer­tain­ty re­mains over the fu­ture of more than 100 work­ers at Nestlé’s Val­sayn man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty, which is be­ing con­sid­ered for sale.

In a state­ment, Nestlé con­firmed that sep­a­ra­tion no­tices had been is­sued fol­low­ing con­sul­ta­tions with the union and non-unionised em­ploy­ees.

“In to­tal 46 em­ploy­ees across our sales and ware­hous­ing teams have been af­fect­ed. Of these em­ploy­ees, 30 (65 per cent) have opt­ed for vol­un­tary sep­a­ra­tion pack­ages, while 16 have been re­trenched,” the com­pa­ny said.

Nestlé main­tained that sep­a­ra­tion ben­e­fits were in keep­ing with its poli­cies and col­lec­tive agree­ments, while as­sis­tance, out­place­ment sup­port and ex­tend­ed ben­e­fits were be­ing made avail­able to af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees.

How­ev­er, OW­TU first vice-pres­i­dent Sati Ga­jad­har-In­niss said dis­cus­sions were con­tin­u­ing, with the union hop­ing to se­cure al­ter­na­tive arrange­ments for some em­ploy­ees fac­ing dis­place­ment.

Asked about the re­ac­tion among em­ploy­ees, she said work­ers had been pre­pared for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of re­trench­ment through ear­li­er con­sul­ta­tions.

“The work­ers were ex­pect­ing it be­cause we have been speak­ing to them about it,” she said.

Nev­er­the­less, she re­mained hope­ful that ne­go­ti­a­tions could re­sult in fur­ther re­duc­tions in the num­ber of com­pul­so­ry sep­a­ra­tions.

The re­struc­tur­ing fol­lows Nestlé’s Oc­to­ber 1 an­nounce­ment that Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion Di­vi­sion would be­come its main lo­cal dis­trib­u­tor from Jan­u­ary 2027.

At the time, Nestlé’s head of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Siti Jones-Gor­don, con­firmed that the arrange­ment would have em­ploy­ment im­pli­ca­tions but said the com­pa­ny was en­gag­ing with the union to min­imise job loss­es.

Mean­while, Ga­jad­har-In­niss said the union was al­so close­ly mon­i­tor­ing de­vel­op­ments sur­round­ing the pro­posed sale of Nestlé’s Val­sayn man­u­fac­tur­ing op­er­a­tions.

She said man­age­ment had in­di­cat­ed that its pre­ferred op­tion was to iden­ti­fy a buy­er will­ing to re­tain the ex­ist­ing work­force.

The fac­to­ry’s fu­ture re­mains a sep­a­rate con­cern from the dis­tri­b­u­tion re­struc­tur­ing.

Nestlé an­nounced a strate­gic re­view of its Trinidad and To­ba­go op­er­a­tions in Ju­ly, cit­ing changes to its glob­al busi­ness strat­e­gy and a re­newed fo­cus on nu­tri­tion, food, cof­fee, pet care and con­fec­tionery.

While Nestlé has stressed that the fac­to­ry sale and the dis­tri­b­u­tion changes are sep­a­rate ex­er­cis­es, the union main­tains that re­tain­ing as many work­ers as pos­si­ble must re­main cen­tral to both process­es.