46 Nestle workers sent home amid restructuring exercise

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.