It's run completely different to other companies and that’s what caught the eye of the Shadow Chancellor.
Ed Balls was clearly surprised and impressed at what he saw at Elland firm Suma Wholefoods on a visit there yesterday.
“It’s clearly really unusual and really successful,” he said.
All 131 members of Suma Wholefoods, based in the Lowfields Business Park, receive the same salary - £30,000 per annum - and conditions, regardless of their position in the organisation.
Mr Balls and Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Calder Valley, Josh Fenton-Glynn, visited the company to see how its business is growing.
Suma has increased its export business from 3% to 20% over the last seven years but wants to develop this aspect and is conducting a recruitment drive to add to their numbers.
Mr Balls said the business, the UK’s largest equal pay employer, proved a refreshing change from the bank RBS “which says they can only succeed with £5m bonuses” arrangement.
“Clearly this is something that is working really well though I am certainly not going to say that it is a model that is going to work for all businesses,” he said. “What we want in the economy is people who innovate and try things and challenge conventional wisdom.
“How many people in the Calder Valley and Elland know we have a company selling food stuff to Asia and South America.”
Suma began life in 1975 by Reg Tayler who had some experience of wholefoods in London and when he moved to Leeds he opened a retail shop called Plain Grain.
In August 1975 at a meeting attended by all the wholefood shops in the north of England, he proposed they set up a wholefoods wholesaling co-operative in order to supply each other.
SHADOW Chancellor Ed Balls weighed into the debate on the future of services at hospitals in Huddersfield and Calderdale yesterday.
The news has caused outrage across both districts with Colne Valley MP Jason McCartney applying for an urgent debate in Parliament.
Dr Steve Ollerton, chairman of the Greater Huddersfield Clinical Commissioning Group, says cuts needed to be made across the whole of the NHS.
Mr Balls, on a whistlestop tour of a business in Elland, said the Prime Minister had to think again. He said: “David Cameron said in 2010 he would cut the deficit not the NHS. This is the opposite of what he promised. It’s got broken promise written all over it.”
He added there were reports of 12-hour trolley waits and said: “That doesn’t feel to me that this is a healthy system that is coping well and is under pressure and in the circumstances it’s pretty risky to thrown even more confusion and chaos into the mix and suggest closing one of the A&E departments.
“I think people will say: ‘how has it come to this?’”.
Public consultation will be held later this year. Barbara Crosse, medical director of the two hospitals, has said retaining the Huddersfield A&E department was the preferred option for clinical, logistical and geographical reasons.
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