Defending jobs

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Vestas: debate on priorities for the next phase

About 150 people, about half Vestas workers, and about half either supporters from the local community or volunteers from the mainland who have come to camp at the factory entrance, attended a meeting on Sunday 9 August to discuss the future direction of the dispute now that the workers occupying the Vestas St Cross factory have bene forced to leave. Occupier Mark Smith, opening the meeting, stressed the priority of stepping up the picket at the St Cross plant and extending it towards a blockade of both Vestas factories (and maybe other Vestas sites) on the island. He also emphasised the...

Government stalls on Vestas: "We do not want to be producers of wind turbines"

Workers' Climate Action has issued the following press release: The climate change minister, Joan Ruddock, yesterday refused to take any further action to prevent the closure of the Vestas wind turbine plant on the Isle of Wight, where workers are staging a picket and regular protests to protect their jobs. Ruddock informed activists and constituents at a surgery in her constituency on Friday (August 7th) that the government had met with Vestas workers along with the RMT union and the TUC the day before, but said that Vestas had refused financial incentives to carry on production in the UK...

They dared to fight: why Thomas Cook workers defied the bosses and the law

Eighteen Thomas Cook employees, six officials of the TSSA trade union, and the partner of one of the Thomas Cook employees appeared in the Irish High Court last week after they had refused to end their sit-in at the Thomas Cook branch in Grafton Street in Dublin. The sit-in had begun the preceding week in response to management attempts to shut down the shop a month ahead of its proposed closure date. Together with employees in the travel company’s other shop in Dublin, the staff had just voted 100% in favour of strike action and action short of strike action in opposition to plans announced...

RMT issues press release about Ruddock talks on Vestas

The RMT union has issued a press release about the meeting on Vestas with Government minister Joan Ruddock on Thursday 6 August. RMT officials Bob Crow and John Leach, along with representatives of the Vestas workforce, met with energy minister Joan Ruddock yesterday to discuss the future of the factory. During the meeting it emerged that the government had offered a series of rescue options to the company but each one had been rejected. Bailiffs' notices were served yesterday on the remaining six men in occupation and moves are expected by noon today by the company to retake possession of the...

Vestas: maintain and extend the pickets!

"Vestas, this is only the start, you will lose", read the sign which occupying workers put up at the wind turbine blade factory at Newport, Isle of Wight, before they were evicted at midday on Friday 7 August, on the 18th day of their occupation. Two workers abseiled down from the management offices on a rope, and one jumped down; three others came out with the bailiffs. (Others have come out individually, or in small groups, over the last two and a half weeks). A large crowd of workers and supporters greeted them, including some 25 who had responded to an emergency call from Workers' Climate...

Government meets Vestas workers - but makes no hard commitments

After two and a half weeks of saying that there was nothing to discuss, the Government finally agreed to meet the Vestas workers on Thursday 6 August. Mike Godley, an occupier who left the factory on Tuesday 4th and is now a RMT steward for the "outside" workers, reported back on the meeting at the 6pm rally at the factory entrance on 6 August. Mike Godley, with another steward, Sean McDonagh, had met Joan Ruddock, Minister of State in Ed Miliband's Department of Energy and Climate Change, together with an RMT representative and a Unite representative (why a Unite representative, was not...

A call from the AWL to all socialists, trade unionists, and environmental activists

The picket outside the occupied Vestas wind turbine blade factory in Newport, Isle of Wight, now needs to be turned into a mass picket. That is how we should respond to the "possession order" granted to Vestas bosses in court today, Tuesday 4 August. With sufficient numbers on the factory entrances, it can become unfeasible for bailiffs to get into the factory and evict the occupiers. There are three entrances to the site. The front has been blocked off already by the police erecting fences. Another, the "marine gate", now has activists' tents pitched outside it, and is accessible on land only...

Vestas bosses win eviction order, but day of solidarity called for 12 August

Several hundred Vestas workers and supporters gathered outside Newport courthouse on Tuesday 4 August as Vestas bosses made their second attempt to get a possession order against the workers occupying their wind turbine blade factory at St Cross, Newport. That same morning, several activists had climbed to the roof of the smaller Vestas factory on the Isle of Wight, at East Cowes, to display a huge banner there reading: "Vestas workers' solidarity - In Occupation - Fight for green jobs". As Steve Stotesbury, spokesperson for the Vestas workers' RMT committee, said outside the courthouse when...

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