Defending jobs

While the numbers of workers across the world thrown on the scrapheap of global capitalism’s current crisis continues to rise, and those responsible sing along with their house trained professional “canaries” about “green shoots” of recovery, spasms of defiance and resistance continue to be seen everywhere. The latest in Italy? Following a successful 14 month occupation and work-in by 240 workers in a machine-tool plant outside Milan against closure and removal of the machinery, teachers are occupying education offices in protest against cuts of 65,000 teaching, ancillary and admin jobs. The...

10 September: Vestas Blade Blockade Steps Up The Pressure By Setting Up A Tripod at Sunrise After more than a week of blockading the Vestas factory in Newport, Isle Of Wight, a tripod has now been erected at the marine gate preventing blades from leaving the factory. A worker from the original occupation is standing on top of the tripod enjoying a stunning view of sunrise over the River Medina. This inspirational addition to the blockade followed a day of police intimidation that included one arrest and one person being banned from the site after receiving a dispersal order. Blockaders have...

Ian Terry, one of the workers who occupied the factory from 20 July to 7 August, spoke to Solidarity on 9 September. We're stopping the blades from going out from the St Cross factory because we believe they're our blades, from our factory, and we would like to see them put up in our country. I think it's difficult to stop them getting out, but people are motivated to do it. We're getting more and more people each day willing to help us, as local people walk past the picket [which is on the cycle path from Newport to Cowes] and talk to us about it. I also want to see an overall fight for jobs...

Vestas bosses moved four wind turbine blades from their Venture Quays factory, in East Cowes, on Friday 4 September, but backed off from moving the nine blades in the St Cross factory, in Newport, after workers and supporters picketed the "marine gate" there. The blades are those left unfinished when workers occupied the factory on 20 July to oppose Vestas bosses' plans to close the factories - Britain's only wind-turbine blade factories - and to demand that the Government nationalise the factories, upgrade the production processes, and save the jobs. Since bailiffs evicted the occupiers on 7...

Vestas bosses moved four wind turbine blades from their Venture Quays factory, in East Cowes, on Friday 4 September, but backed off from moving the nine blades in the St Cross factory, in Newport, after workers and supporters picketed the "marine gate" there. The blades are those left unfinished when workers occupied the factory on 20 July. After bailiffs evicted the occupiers on 7 August, workers continued picketing the factory against the movement of those blades and other materials from the site. The blades have to go by barge, within about two hours either side of high tide ( click here...

Vestas bosses are probably going to try to move wind turbine blades on Friday 4 September, from their factory at St Cross industrial estate, Newport, Isle of Wight. Workers are rallying to picket the movement. The blades are those left unfinished when workers occupied the factory on 20 July. After bailiffs evicted the occupiers on 7 August, workers continued picketing the factory against the movement of those blades and other materials from the site. Our information is that Vestas bosses now have the blades ready to move, and have given starting order to the two barges which transport the...

The motions on the agenda for the TUC, meeting in Liverpool from 14 to 17 September, show that Britain's trade-union establishment is far from facing up to the battles ahead. Unemployment is heading towards three million. Cuts in public services will soon be sharper than ever before. Workers at Vestas, Visteon, Prisme, and Thomas Cook have occupied workplaces to try to save jobs. The Vestas workers have called for nationalisation where a workplace is shut by a private owner. Anti-cuts campaigns are emerging around the country. Yet the agenda contains only one motion directly about jobs, number...

In mid-July up to 20,000 people marched through Kilmarnock in opposition to Diageo’s plans to shut down its Johnnie Walker bottling plant in the town, at a cost of some 700 jobs, and to shut down its Port Dundas grain distillery in Glasgow at the cost of another 200 jobs. From the platform at the closing rally great speeches were held by politicians from all the major parties pledging their support for the campaign to keep the bottling plant open. Closure was deplorable, unacceptable, and economic and social vandalism on a grand scale. (The focus on the historic links between Johnnie Walker...

Our best information is that Vestas may try to ship out the wind-turbine blades left in their factories in the Isle of Wight soon, probably this week (31 Aug - 4 Sep). Protest against the movement of those blades, and of the moulds which Vestas also wants to move, is the chief leverage that the workers have with Vestas. Around 11 blades, worth about three quarters of a million pounds, were unfinished on 20 July when workers occupied the St Cross factory, to resist closure, and bosses sent home workers from the Venture Quays for fear that factory would be occupied too. Now - according to our...

Eighteen Thomas Cook employees, six officials of the TSSA union, and the partner of one of the workers appeared in the Irish High Court last week after they refused to end their four-day sit-in against the closure of the Thomas Cook branch in Grafton Street in Dublin. Before 31 July, the staff, together with employees in the travel company’s other shop in Dublin, had just voted 100% in favour of strike action and action short of strike action in opposition to plans announced by Thomas Cook in May to close its high street shops in the Republic of Ireland. Turnout in the ballot was 84%. 77...