Sacked workers occupy Belfast and Enfield car parts factories

Some 200 workers occupied the Visteon car components factory in west Belfast on 31 March, and workers in Enfield occupied on 1 April.

Vicki Morris reports on the Visteon occupation in Enfield, north London and on why Thursday 9 April will be a crunch day for the dispute

“We done what we had to do, we have a message for big multinational corporations: you can’t get away with it no more. You should treat ordinary people with respect. And it’s not us that should be treated as criminals but people like Mandelson.”

Kevin Nolan, Unite convenor from the occupied Visteon factory in Enfield, was speaking outside the High Court on Monday 6 April. He and the deputy convenor, Piers Hood, had gone to the court in the morning facing imprisonment for defying an eviction notice brought on behalf of Visteon against the workers occupying their former workplace in north London. Visteon employees are also in occupation at another Visteon factory in Belfast, and employees in Basildon are picketing their former workplace.

The Belfast workers went into occupation on Tuesday 31 March on hearing that they were to be made redundant when the Visteon UK company went into receivership, entailing the loss of 565 jobs in all. Visteon workers in Enfield and Basildon were also reeling from the news of their sacking, without notice. They were told to return in the morning or over the next week to collect their tools. Instead they went away, discussed and resolved to return in the morning to emulate their Belfast workmates.

On Wednesday 1 April, while the eyes of the media were on the G20 summit and protests, some of the Enfield workers succeeded in getting inside the factory and secured part of it for the occupation. They have control of the paintshop and roof.

There are about 100 workers in occupation in Enfield. Workers who are not occupying visit the factory constantly along with family members. As the days have passed a steady stream of visitors has arrived, along with messages of support from across the UK, and money raised at union meetings.

On Saturday 4 April there was a rally at the factory, with speakers from Unite London region and labour movement bodies from north London. Rightly, the occupations have become a focus for the local labour movement, and they need to be a focus for the whole British labour movement.

Visteon is not the first group of workers to go into occupation in the UK since the recession began, there was the small but important inspiration of the Prisme workers in Dundee. The campaign by Visteon workers, however, has the potential to be, and must become an example that galvanises the whole labour movement to resist job losses.

Visteon UK, an injection moulding company making car parts – mostly dashboards – for Ford, Jaguar and Land Rover, was an integral part of the Ford company until 2000 when it was spun off. This was done for several reasons, including that it would make it easier for the company to win work from Ford’s competitor car firms. Visteon UK has gone into liquidation, but it is not clear that it is actually bankrupt. By going into bankruptcy, the company hopes to avoid meeting guarantees made to workers when the company was spun off: that their terms and conditions would mirror those of Ford employees. The workers’ union accepted contracts moving to Visteon in 2000 only because the workers were promised Ford terms and conditions for life.

In the first place, the Visteon workers are fighting for a better redundancy package than the statutory minimum they are currently being offered. But many of them also hope that a deal can be reached whereby they will be offered work in another part of Ford. At Saturday’s meeting Unite London region organiser Steve Hart told the meeting that they were fighting for jobs, not just better redundancy terms.

Visteon has plants in other parts of the world. Some of the workers think that the work they have been doing will move to a large plant in Turkey.
What the Visteon workers can win depends on many factors. The most important is what support they can get from elsewhere in Ford and from their union, Unite. They are visiting Ford factories elsewhere in the UK and arguing for Ford workers to boycott Visteon parts. Their union Unite should be arguing strongly for this and facilitating visits. It is not clear to what extent this is happening. So far the union has not repudiated the occupations, although they are clearly illegal; they have supported the occupations with words and financial and legal assistance, but how far they are willing to go in supporting the occupations will be tested quickly.

Another consideration is that, clearly, the occupation cannot be sustained indefinitely. The Unite region has done a lot of work to make life liveable inside the factory: workers don’t want for food, and the regional organisers went around Tesco buying up all the sleeping bags and airbeds the occupiers would need. But this can only go on so long: workers could become demoralised without results.

Several things need to happen:
Support from the rest of the labour movement must be overwhelming – Visteon workers are not just fighting for themselves. They are fighting for dignity and respect, and many have a sense that that is what they are doing. They want to inspire emulation: they want job losses to be fought by other groups of workers.

Support must be overwhelming because this relatively small group of workers cannot be expected to bear the whole weight of the fightback on their own shoulders.

The occupation must be publicised widely so that it becomes an inspiring example: the Visteon workers will not become isolated if other groups of workers are going into occupation. News that schools and nurseries in Glasgow threatened with closure have been occupied by parents suggests that the tactic can take off elsewhere, but people have to hear that news.
Workers in Ford, former co-workers of Visteon workers, should be lobbied and encouraged to help their fight with donations and by boycotting Visteon products.

International links should be cultivated where they can be; the workforce at Visteon Enfield is very mixed in their backgrounds (and ages and gender – there are many women workers among the workers and some in the occupation). Links should be made where they can be with other workforces in the supply chain, ideally in Turkey where production could move if it is moved from Visteon UK.

A deal struck between Visteon and Unite in the High Court on Monday placed a deadline for ending the occupation of Thursday 9 April. It was the price the union agreed to pay in order to keep Nolan and Hood out of prison which was what was being threatened on Monday morning! It is clear that jailing would have provoked a huge reaction from many workers – the company decided that discretion is the better part of valour. Kevin and Piers are banned from going inside the factory again; if they do, they face immediate imprisonment, but they are in touch with the occupation. The deal also includes Kevin flying to the US with other Unite representatives, including joint general secretary Derek Simpson, on Wednesday 8 April to a meeting with the Visteon corporation.

To judge by the mood of the workers attending a support meeting in Haringey on Monday night they seem satisfied with the deal struck at the High Court, but on Thursday if they get bad news back from the US, that Visteon corporation will not meet their demands, they will have to decide whether to fight on. It is vital that this brief hiatus is used to keep building for a sustained fight, a fight that is spread to other workers.

Build the support: what you can do
- The best way to help the Visteon workers win is to take and publicise lessons from the occupations:
• Use the occupations to show that workers can and must resist redundancies – at the very least, workers must fight for the most favourable redundancy terms possible.

• Use the occupations, as the workers themselves are doing, to argue that factories should not simply close when companies are in financial difficulty: workers should be able to see the company accounts and make suggestions of how production can be reorganised to keep the company viable. Industries that are laying off workers should be nationalised. Redundancy is not the obvious solution to financial difficulty: workers need jobs, and all enterprises can be adapted to create goods that people need. At Visteon, the machinery can be used to create parts for many more uses than cars. The workers themselves know and say that.

- For Enfield, email messages of support to visteonoccupation@gmail.com. Take collections to support the occupations; send cheques payable to 'HSG' c/o Haringey Support Group, PO Box 2474, London N8. Include a note saying what it is for. For Belfast, email messages to dmcmurray@unitetheunion.com.

- Visit the factories in Belfast, Enfield and Basildon at any time, but particularly when rallies are called. At Enfield there is a ‘friends and family’ rally on Wednesday 8 April from 11.30am till 2pm, and on Thursday 9 April a march is being planned in the area to go to the plant. In the case that the workers face eviction the labour movement should be there in force to resist. There are already bailiffs on the site in Enfield, though there will probably not be an attempt to impose the eviction notice until after Wednesday’s meeting in the US.

Text messages of support to John (Belfast) 07816 590 380, Kevin (Enfield) 07808 895 724, Des (Basildon) 07814 432 215. Another mobile phone inside the Enfield plant: 07799 896 466. Appeal sheet for the Enfield occupation attached (download pdf).