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‘Disabled staff member won’t lose job’: Nestlé

Nestlé Italy said on Thursday that a disabled staff member, who was initially sacked for publicly criticizing company managers over Facebook, will no longer lose her job.

'Disabled staff member won't lose job': Nestlé
Marilena Petruccioli will no longer lose her job at Nestlé's Perugina plant. Photo: Photo: My aim is true

The decision was made during talks with union leaders from the Umbria branch of Fai-Cisl on Thursday, the company said in a statement.

Marilena Petruccioli, who works at the company's Perugina plant in Perugia, will instead be subjected to a disciplinary measure, rather than be dismissed, after a compromise was reached with the union.

Nestlé Italy said that the company and union fully agreed that food safety and hygiene standards are "non-negotiable" values of the company, with both sides recognizing the "inappropriateness of Petruccioli’s social media comments, because they could send out a misleading message about the importance of food safety".

The offence took place on October 30th, when Marilena Petruccioli posted a message on her Facebook page expressing her disgust after reading a disciplinary note from “the head of personnel” at "this company" in which the person purportedly compared a member of staff to a dog.

Petruccioli said in the post that the manager should be "put under review" for using the word 'collare', meaning 'dog collar', in reference to a foreman who had been disciplined for flouting health and safety rules at the company's factory in Perugia, La Repubblica reported.

"'Il collare' is worn by dogs, not people," she wrote. "Certain people who hold certain roles should be careful about the terms they use in certain official actions."

Although Pertuccioli, who is also a union representative for staff at the factory, didn’t name the company, she was dismissed earlier this month for "publicly attacking the company’s personnel managers".

Nestlé Italy said in a statement on Wednesday that Pertuccioli had "ridiculed" company managers on social media for their efforts in "enforcing stringent sanitation and security measures” in order to “protect workers, products and customers."

The company added that the disciplinary action referred to in the message was taken against a factory foreman for not wearing appropriate overalls while working on a production line.

It said the public comments had “undermined the authority” of those in charge of enforcing health and safety regulations.

“From a trade union representative, who has the responsibility of representing hundreds of people working in the largest plant of the Nesté group in Italy, we expected support and not criticism of efforts to ensure safety in the workplace.”

Pertuccioli has been working for the company since 1996 and was placed under Italy’s “protected” workers category after becoming disabled following a workplace accident in 1997.

Dario Bruschi, the president of Fai-Cisl Umbria, claimed the Facebook post referred to something that "happened in another company" and "that a series of circumstances might have led to the belief that it referred to Nestlé-Perugina".

But Nestlé Italy dismissed the claim, saying it "was misleading to attempt to represent and minimize the repeated comments of Mrs Petruccioli as being unrelated, or related to the context where she works." 

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CHOCOLATE

Swiss chocolate consumption falls to 40-year low in pandemic

The desire for comfort food during the pandemic has failed to boost the fortunes of Swiss chocolate.

Swiss chocolate consumption falls to 40-year low in pandemic
Photo: STEFAN WERMUTH / AFP

Swiss chocolate makers were perhaps expecting a sweet spot as people turned to comfort food during the pandemic but are instead facing devastating 2020 figures showing consumption in Switzerland melting to a 40-year-low.

Chocosuisse, the national federation of Swiss chocolate makers, painted a bleak picture this week of the impact that the Covid-19 crisis had taken on the industry, with plunging production, exports and even consumption.

And Lindt and Sprungli, one of the wealthy Alpine nation’s most famous chocolate makers, published its annual results Tuesday detailing a nearly 11-percent drop in its 2020 revenues, to 4 billion Swiss francs ($4.4 billion, 3.6 billion euros).

Amid lockdowns and a pandemic-fuelled economic crisis last year, it may not be surprising that Swiss chocolate makers overall saw their production fall, shrinking 10 percent compared to 2019, to 180,000 tonnes, according to Chocosuisse.

And exports, which account for nearly 70 percent of Swiss chocolate makers’ revenues, fell by more than that, slumping 11.5 percent in 2020, to 126,000 tonnes.

More surprising perhaps is that the country renowned for its love of high-quality cocoa products, where people gobble up more chocolate per capita than anywhere else in the world, also saw consumption drop.

Lowest since 1982

In fact, annual consumption fell to below the symbolic threshold of 10 kilogrammes (22 pounds) per person, dipping to 9.9 kilos — the lowest level since 1982.

A major contributor to the drop, Chocosuisse chief Urs Furrer told AFP, was the steep decline in foreign tourists, who tend to tip the consumption scales.

The per capita chocolate consumption in a country is calculated by dividing the volumes sold by the number of inhabitants, leading to inflated figures in Switzerland, where chocolate treats are a favourite souvenir.

“It would be impossible to calculate the exact consumption of residents, because in shops, the salespeople do not know if their customer lives in Switzerland or is a tourist,” Furrer said.

But the absence of tourists is not the whole explanation for last year’s decline. In Switzerland as elsewhere, the health crisis and accompanying restrictions including forced teleworking, has had a clear impact on consumption habits.

“Consumption also dropped in areas that are usually crowded with passers-by, like train stations and city centres,” Furrer said, pointing out that chocolate was often an impulse buy by people on the move.

Physical distancing requirements have also taken a toll on social occasions where handing over a box of chocolates might be expected.

“The sale of gift boxes of pralines has also declined,” Furrer said.

At the same time however, the sale of raw products like chocolate masse usually used by chocolatiers, bakeries and patisseries rose last year as more amateurs delved into making their own sweets at home.

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