IN Brief:
- More than 300 Uddingston workers have accepted a 9.6% basic-pay increase over 21 months.
- Basic pay rises from £13 to £13.61, then to £14.25 from April 2027.
- The settlement removes threatened industrial action at Tunnock's principal confectionery manufacturing site.
More than 300 workers at Tunnock’s Uddingston factory have accepted an improved pay settlement worth 9.6% over 21 months, removing the immediate threat of industrial action at the Scottish manufacturer’s principal confectionery production site.
The agreement raises basic hourly pay from £13 to £13.61 retrospectively from 1 July 2026, followed by a further increase to £14.25 from 1 April 2027. Unite said members had previously backed strike action overwhelmingly, prompting renewed negotiations and an enhanced offer that was subsequently accepted by a majority of workers.
The settlement removes a potentially disruptive operating risk at the plant responsible for products including Caramel Wafers and Teacakes. In a concentrated food manufacturing operation, interrupted shifts can quickly affect finished-goods availability, despatch schedules, customer orders, and the utilisation of equipment upstream and downstream of the affected workforce.
The timing coincides with further development at Uddingston as Tunnock’s prepares the site for anticipated growth in worldwide demand. Current planning activity is intended to strengthen factory resilience and preserve the long-established manufacturing operation, with the wider development described as safeguarding 534 jobs at the site.
Labour stability has practical value inside a factory where production depends on line operators, engineering, hygiene, quality, warehousing, and supervisory roles working to the same schedule. Those skills are not automatically interchangeable between shifts or processes, and an absence in one operation can create a bottleneck even when most of the plant remains staffed.
Confectionery production magnifies that dependency because products pass through sequential process stages and relatively fixed equipment paths. Wafers, caramel, chocolate coatings, biscuit bases, mallow components, wrapping, cartoning, and case packing have to remain balanced if output is to flow efficiently. A disruption at one stage can leave upstream material accumulating while downstream equipment sits under-used.
The settlement reduces that immediate risk, although it adds to labour costs at a time when confectionery manufacturers are contending with expensive ingredients. Cocoa has created sustained pressure for chocolate and biscuit producers, while energy, packaging, and transport remain significant factory costs. Tunnock’s most recent reported results also showed a sharp decline in pre-tax profit, leaving less room for cost increases to be absorbed without affecting margins or pricing.
Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite, described the settlement as a “significant victory for Tunnock’s workers”, linking the improved offer to members’ willingness to take industrial action. The dispute has now ended with a defined pay path through April 2027 rather than escalating into production stoppages.
Certainty over labour availability also helps as the business considers further capital work at Uddingston. Engineering projects inside established food factories compete with production for access to line areas, utilities, shutdown windows, hygiene resources, and maintenance staff. Planned interventions become harder to execute when labour availability is itself uncertain.
Tunnock’s has repeatedly expanded the Uddingston operation as demand has grown. Its company history records factory extensions during the 1960s after development of the branded biscuit and confectionery products that now define the business, while more recent proposals continue the same broad pattern of retaining manufacturing on the existing site and adapting buildings around a mature production footprint.
Concentrating production preserves established skills, equipment knowledge, supplier arrangements, and quality systems, but continued expansion within one site also tightens constraints around space, storage, material movements, ventilation, and utilities. Workforce reliability becomes increasingly important when physical headroom narrows because there is less spare capacity available to compensate for disruption.
The pay agreement sits within a wider challenge for UK food manufacturers trying to retain experienced production staff while controlling labour costs. Entry-level hourly rates have risen across manufacturing and logistics, and factories compete for employees with warehouses, retail distribution, hospitality, and other local employers. A higher settlement has to be weighed against recruitment churn, overtime, training costs, lost output, and the disruption created when experienced employees leave.
Tunnock’s now has a defined basic-pay path and no current strike threat among the more than 300 workers covered by the agreement. Higher labour costs, volatile ingredients, and continued capital requirements remain, but the operational uncertainty associated with imminent industrial action has been removed.
The next pressure point is factory execution. Uddingston has to absorb demand growth, planned site development, labour-cost increases, and volatile inputs without allowing any one constraint to undermine throughput. A pay settlement cannot solve those engineering and capacity questions, but it prevents a workforce dispute from becoming another variable in an already tightly coupled production system.
