Employees at Denmark’s largest organic food retailer, Coop, are staging a nationwide strike.
Workers at the central warehouse in Albertslund, to the east of the country, went on strike on 4 February. Staff in the fresh goods warehouse in Hasselager quickly followed suit, as did workers in the non-food warehouse in Odense.
They are reportedly dissatisfied with negotiations over leadership at the business.
Head of information at Coop, Jens Juul Nielsen, told the Danish broadsheet newspaper: “We’ve called in an emergency group of employees from other departments to help handle the goods.
“But the situation could lead to delays and shops falling behind their good deliveries.”
The Coop chain is made up of 1,200 shops across the country with about 40,000 employees and 1.3 million consumer members. This means almost every household in Denmark – a country with a population of five million people – is a member of the co-op.
The recent World Co-op Monitor stated Coop had an annual turnover of $7.3bn (£5bn) in 2013.
The chain also includes supermarket brands Kvickly, SuperBrugsen, Brugsen, Irma and the discount store Fakta. Coop recently announced they would be closing 20 branches of Fakta but modernising 150 other stores across the country at a cost of €40.2m (£31.1m).
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