In the case of a catastrophic strike by Best Food Logistics workers, fast food restaurants may be forced to hurry to source alternative supplies through no fault of their own.
It claimed that 93% of employees had rejected a 6% pay increase since it was much lower than the rate of inflation and amounted to a real-terms pay loss this year and next.
Nadine Houghton, GMB National Officer, said: “These workers bust a gut to deliver fresh, just-in-time food to some of the biggest names in the business.
“Best Food’s parent companies Booker and Tesco are making incredibly healthy profits and paying large dividends while leaving these workers crushed by the cost of living.
“Now some of their biggest clients may well be left short this Christmas because they won’t meet GMB’s reasonable request for a pay deal that protects our members through this year and into next with a genuine cost of living increase.”
The prospect of disruption to supplies for chains builds on a year of intensifying union action across the economy that has seen railway workers, Royal Mail, and Post Office staff-to-Felixstowe dock workers walk out in a fight for better pay.
The outgoing leader of the trade union body the TUC has warned key healthcare workers could be next on the picket lines this winter.
Frances O’Grady was due to tell its annual congress they were already struggling with rising bills and claim that members of unions were facing the “longest squeeze on real wages since Napoleonic times”.
“If ministers and employers keep hammering pay packets at the same rate, UK workers are on course to suffer two decades of lost living standards”, she said.
“We have got to stop the rot”.
The prospect of a pay fight between the government and unions representing health workers could not come at a more difficult time given winter pressure on the NHS and the clear signal from the new chancellor Jeremy Hunt that he will be keeping a tight hold of the public purse strings in the wake of the disastrous mini-budget outlined by his predecessor.