Excerpt from Jane Holgate published in 2005. It is titled Organizing migrant workers: a case study of working conditions and unionization in a London sandwich factory and published in Work Employment Society volume 19, on pages 463-480.

Food-to-Go: the company and profile of the workforce
Over the last decade the sandwich industry has become a global business with an expanding market currently (2004) thought to be worth around US$50 billion dollars a year (BBC, 2004). Food-to-Go (a pseudonym for the employer company), the factory where the union organizing place was taking place, is a multinational company supplying major high street retail stores, with 12 food factories in the UK, two of which specialize in sandwich production: one located in London and the other in northern England. There were considerable disparities in the terms and conditions of the company’s two sandwich factories, not least the composition of the workforce (see Table 1). Workers in the London factory were predominantly from BME groups, whereas at the northern factory they were mainly white. In London, workers had lower pay, no premium pay, less holidays, no sick pay – and no union recognition.

Yet Food-to-Go had a long-standing relationship with the trade union, and all of the company’s factories in the UK had voluntary recognition agreements, except the one in London. Management at the London factory indicated that they would voluntarily recognize the union only if it could demonstrate 50 percent union membership. This contrasted with other Food-to-Go sites in the UK, where full recognition was granted to the union, even prior to the union having members on site.

Given the labour-intensive nature of the work in food production, companies are looking for people who are prepared to work for low pay and tolerate difficult working conditions. This profile fits many new migrant workers