The settlement brings improved pension compensation for transferred employees serving up to ten years with Sodexo, guaranteed employment for three years and other workplace guarantees including no split shifts.

On April 9 the strikers gathered at Unilever headquarters in Rotterdam dressed in wigs and masks and pushing rollators. When Unilever’s CFO agreed to meet with the strikers they presented him with an abacus, the traditional Chinese calculating device, to compute their pension losses. The long denied negotiations then got underway between Unilever and the union.

While the strikers were demonstrating in Rotterdam FAWU members at the Unilever Pietermaritzburg site showed their support with a union demonstration and petitions to local and corporate management.

FNV Bondgenoten and the strikers have expressed warm appreciation for the international support and solidarity they received throughout this long and difficult conflict.

Union members are now in their fifth week of industrial action and have been on continuous strike since March 14.

One of the strikers, Tiny van Haren, told the IUF “I’ve been employed by Unilever in Oss for 46 years. I feel that it’s a bad deal to now have to experience this transfer to a company like Sodexo.”

Another striker, John Voorzaat, said “I’ve been working for Unilever at Nassaukade for 27 years, but because of the outsourcing to Sodoxo I’m losing a big part of my future pension, and after 6 years I will have also have to pay a bigger pension contribution. I think that Unilever can do more, I’ve earned that respect.”

The union is demanding no more than what other Dutch companies have provided their outsourced workers. In December 2012, for example, Philips outsourced a number of workers, but each worker received as part of the transfer arrangements full compensation for pension losses, based on the pension rights employees had accumulated at Philips before the transfer.

Unilever knows this, but is refusing to negotiate.

Boosted by strong sales growth of Magnum ice cream, Unilever recently announced that CEO Polman’s compensation for an “exceptional” 2012 rose to a total GBP 6 milliion, or USD 9 million,

Polman’s base salary will increase 3.6 percent to GBP 1.01 million pounds in 2013, following a 6 percent increase last July.

The total package includes GBP 250,000 in ‘fixed allowance’, GBP 116,000 in pensions and GBP 288,000 in additional benefits, up from GBP 26,000 the previous year.

As the strikers say, Unilever can do more.

Tensions are inevitable, because the two sides bring different demands and expectations to the process. The latest meeting brought a deepening and widening of the agenda which is positive, and which could serve as a model for other transnational companies.

IUF general secretary Ron Oswald, representatives of IUF affiliates, representatives from the general and regional secretariats and a representative of IndustriAll met with corporate and regional management in London on March 5 to continue our engagement on key issues. While the core issue remains trade union rights and the denial of these rights in cases which threaten to spill over into sharp confrontation, the agenda has widened to include precarious work and the outsourcing of production, gender equality and global and health and safety policy.

Members of the IUF-affiliated Independent Union of Kecap Bango Workers (SPMKB) show their solidarity with the strikes and protest actions of the FNV Bondgenoten in the Netherlands, where the union is demanding decent transfer conditions for workers being outsourced to Sodexo.