King's Lynn company says 'no redundancies or lay-offs'

One of West Norfolk's biggest employers has defended itself after dozens of agency workers appeared to lose their jobs last week.

A spokesman for Foster Refrigerator confirmed this morning that the number of “temporary staff” who were let go last week was 75.

There were claims that as many 130 agency staff had been released but Foster dismissed this as “factually incorrect”.

In a statement, Rebecca Vincent, emphasised that the staff had not been “laid off” as they were employed by an external agency rather than Foster.

Mrs Vincent said: “Foster uses temporary staff to manage seasonal demand and the number fluctuates depending on orders.

“With the current crisis, demand from our customers has reduced so we have paused production until 17 April at the earliest.

“As a result, there is currently no work for temporary staff, but we understand that many of them have been offered other roles by the agency they work for, so as far as we are aware no one has lost their job.

“As they are not employed by Foster, we are not able to pay them the 80 per cent of their wages under the Government’s Job Retention Scheme.”

She added: “Amongst our directly employed staff there have been no redundancies or lay-offs.”

The company said last week that business continues in terms of product supply, distribution, technical service and commercial assistance.

A spokesperson also said a “healthy stock” enabled them to pause production.

The ‘crisis management plan’ was adopted in order to try and contain the virus.

Last week, Mrs Vincent said: “This will entail running the business on a smaller number of staff in line with the demands of the market, whilst taking all the necessary precautions to protect our staff and customers.

“We would like to place on record our thanks to all our staff, distributors and customers that have been working so hard throughout these recent turbulent weeks to support our industry and keep society moving.”

One of the agency workers, who did not wish to be named, claims he has been advised to apply for universal credit.

He added: “I rang them on Friday regarding our 80 per cent wage and they told me we weren’t getting this and said to just go and claim universal credit.

“I have spoken to many others whom I worked with there and they were all saying the same thing; some even said that the phone was put down on them. They are refusing to answer any questions we put to them.”

Another anonymous employee who still works for Foster told the Lynn News that someone went around the office informing people they would be finished as off 3.30pm on Wednesday afternoon.