{"id":2927,"date":"2019-10-26T11:47:31","date_gmt":"2019-10-26T11:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=2927"},"modified":"2019-11-27T09:58:50","modified_gmt":"2019-11-27T09:58:50","slug":"how-brexit-will-affect-fast-food-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=2927","title":{"rendered":"How Brexit will affect the fast food industry \u2013 the cost of taking back control"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Since the 2016 referendum and the ongoing debates about the terms of Brexit, the fast food industry has emerged as one of the major battlegrounds of the EU withdrawal process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disagreements have mainly concerned agribusiness\nregulation and its accompanying food standards. But Brexit has also shed light\non political and economic fault lines further down the food supply chain that\nare often overlooked, in particular at the point of fast food preparation and\ndelivery. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brexit and the affect on the fast food industry <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

When the so-called \u2018pizza club\u2019 of Brexiteer\ncabinet members plotted over slices of pepperoni against Theresa May\u2019s Brexit deal\nlast autumn, they were participating in a thriving UK takeaway market worth \u00a36.2 billion<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The expansion of food-to-go\nplatforms like Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Just Eat is of course a global\nphenomenon, and Brexit is unlikely to directly affect investment decisions in\nthat sector of the British economy. Yet the UK\u2019s relationship to the EU, as I\nargue in a contribution to a forthcoming  PQ special issue on food and Brexit<\/a>, does have material consequences for fast food\nworkers. Brexit could affect the employment rights, collective bargaining and immigration\nstatus of the many overseas citizens employed as riders and labourers in food\naggregator \u2018dark kitchens\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

McStrike <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

It is against this backdrop that last October a\ncoalition of unions and civil society organisation launched a nationwide McStrike<\/a> demanding living wage, union recognition and\nthe end to zero-hour contracts in chains like McDonalds, JD Weatherspoon and\nTGI Fridays. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Irrespective of its limited immediate impact,  the Fast Food Rights campaign<\/a> forged a unique alliance between traditional unions like the Bakers,\nFood and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) whose 20,000 strong-membership is mainly\nconcentrated in processing plants and hospitality, and new rank-and-file\norganisations such as the Independent Workers of Great Britain (IWGB), who have\nover recent years unionised an estimated 4,100 members among Uber drivers, couriers,\ncleaners and foster carers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The alliance reflects in\na microcosm the UK\u2019s changing class composition, and the accompanying attempts\nby some unions to organise and coordinate diverse workforces across the whole\nof the food supply chain. One striking aspect of such efforts are the radically\nopposing views on Brexit emanating from the main unions involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Union views of the EU<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

While the BFAWU adopted a Left-Brexit (\u2018Lexit\u2019)\nposition at its 2016 congress, the IWGB  steadfastly supports remaining in\nthe EU<\/a> through a\nPeople\u2019s Vote  \u00ad\u2013 \u201cand, if a vote is\nimpossible, a Brexit which ensures the UK remains a member of the single\nmarket, with EU employment law protections\u201d. The IWGB sees European law as the \u2018constitutional\nunderpinning\u2019 of worker\u2019s rights in the UK. This is because it offers\nprotections and importantly, enforcement mechanisms through the Court of\nJustice of the European Union, which would otherwise be unavailable or\nsignificantly diluted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, the IWGB was one of several\nintervenors in the Supreme Court hearing on Gina Miller\u2019s legal case requiring\na Parliamentary Act to formally authorise the UK\u2019s departure from the EU. Furthermore,\nit has assiduously deployed EU-based legislation in the high-profile cases involving\nits members.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The BFAWU in contrast,\nhas for many years portrayed the EU<\/a> as \u201ca gravy train, working in the interests of\nwealthy elites and industrial scale tax avoidance\u201d, and insisting  that \u201cit\u2019s never been bureaucrats in Brussels\nor bureaucrats in any government that\u2019s given us any rights, it\u2019s what we have\nmade sure that we have achieved by standing together collectively\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contrasting expectations of the future of fast food after Brexit<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

These ideological and tactical divergences reflect\ncontrasting expectations of how Brexit will affect the fast food industry. The\nprecarious immigrant labourer that cooks and delivers food-to-go is, for unions\nlike the IWGB, emblematic of a growing gig economy. And that is best challenged\nthrough grassroots actions aimed at enforcing employment law (much of it\nderived from EU directives).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, Lexiteers\nin the Bakers Union envisage a British food sector protected by a socialist government\nin Downing Street. They hope this will revitalise the manufacturing sector more\ngenerally, and food production, processing and hospitality more specifically. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boris Johnsons\u2019 project for a free-trading, deregulated\n\u2018Global Britain\u2019 is plainly more closely aligned to the promises of gig economy.\nIt is consonant in many ways with Deliveroo\u2019s cosmopolitan promise of a \u2018food freedom\u2019<\/a> that brings global flavours straight to our\ndoor at the press of a button.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking forward, like the rest of the British\nlabour movement, fast food rights campaigners will have to take stock and\nadjust their repertoire of activism to a post-Brexit landscape characterised by\nstruggles over workers\u2019 rights without legal recourse to European institutions.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In that sense, the takeaway pizza ordered by Tory cabinet rebels is more than conspiratorial fuel: it symbolises the wider socioeconomic implications of a flexible, low-cost, platform-driven food system that is likely to accompany Britain \u2018taking back control\u2019 of its laws and standards in coming years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A longer version of this article will appear in the <\/em>Political Quarterly <\/a>journal. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since the 2016 referendum and the ongoing debates about the terms of Brexit, the fast food industry has emerged as one of the major battlegrounds of the EU withdrawal process. Disagreements have mainly concerned agribusiness regulation and its accompanying food standards. But Brexit has also shed light on political and economic fault lines further down […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":174,"featured_media":2929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1390,1395,1406,1396],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1743],"class_list":["post-2927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brexit","category-comment","category-economy","category-uk"],"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/How-Brexit-will-affect-the-fast-food-industry-\u2013-the-cost-of-taking-back-control-alexandra-gorn-52jG7-FN22Y-unsplash-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/174"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2927\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2927"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=2927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}