The restructuring events database contains factsheets with data on large-scale restructuring events reported in the principal national media and company websites in each EU Member State. This database was created in 2002.
Manufacturing Manufacture Of Food And Beverage Manufacture Of Food Products 10 - Manufacture of food products
130 jobs Number of planned job losses
Announcement Date
22 June 2006
Employment effect (start)
Foreseen end date
Description
130 workers in Kent will lose their jobs with the relocation of a family bakery in Kent to Blackburn. Hoppers Farmhouse Bakery is one of Herne Bay's biggest employers but will close early next year, its parent company Interlink Foods has announced.
Interlink, which took over Hoppers in January 2004, is to move production to its factory in Blackburn, Lancashire. Hoppers, which makes mince pies and treacle tarts, started as a family-run business in east Kent 200 years ago.
'A lot of people are broken hearted because they have been working here a long time,' said employee Laurence Willis.
'They like working here and they get on with the people, but they are resigned to their fate.'
Roger Gale, MP for Thanet North, said: 'It is sad that a good, well-established Kent family firm with a very good reputation is being put under because of a merger with a larger company.'
Interlink said it hoped some Hoppers staff would be found jobs elsewhere in the group but redundancies were inevitable because of the distance between Hoppers and its other sites.
'The company is now entering a 90-day consultation with trade union stewards and others elected by their colleagues,' it said.
Sources
22 June 2006: BBC News
Citation
Eurofound (2006), Hoppers Farmhouse Bakery, Relocation in United Kingdom, factsheet number 63675, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/63675.
Digitisation and automation technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), can affect working conditions in a variety of ways and their use in the workplace raises a host of new ethical concerns.
The retail banking sector is fertile ground for studying the impacts of digitalisation on work and employment. Financial services are increasingly provided online, without the intermediary of customer-facing institutions.
European labour markets have recovered strongly from COVID-19. By the end of 2021, little more than 18 months after the start of the pandemic, employment rates in the EU were almost at pre-crisis levels.
