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Unionists show 'solidarity' for Visteon workers outside Watford Ford showroom (From Watford Observer)
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Unionists show 'solidarity' for Visteon workers outside Watford Ford showroom
1:15pm Saturday 25th April 2009
Trade unionists staged a lunchtime protest today to support workers “sacked with six minutes notice”.
About a dozen members of Watford Trades Council gathered outside the Sky Ford showroom in Rickmansworth Road, Watford, to back staff shown the door by Visteon UK.
Up to 600 employees were made redundant with little notice by the firm, which has plants in Basildon, Enfield and in Belfast, at the end of March.
The plants used to belong to Ford, and the sackings followed Visteon's fall into administration with reported losses of about £669 million.
Workers claim they were made a number of guarantees about pay when the company split from Ford and are now striking outside the factories until those promises are honoured.
Members of Watford TUC have stood on the picket line outside the Enfield plant on two occasions and decided to today protest outside Ford's Watford showroom.
Jon Gamble, secretary of Watford TUC, said: “We're down here to show our solidarity with Visteon workers who are on strike about being made redundant.
“They were told with six minutes notice they were going to be thrown on the dole.
“We're getting very good responses from people driving into Watford, particularly from postal workers round the corner in Ascot Road. Every time they go past, they are honking because they are faced with the same threat. Part privatisation is part of outsourcing. The company that takes them over could do the same thing to postal workers that's happened to Visteon. It's a cost-cutting exercise.
“It's important workers don't go quietly. When Woolworths closed before Christmas, their union let it happen without a shot being fired. Those workers are now on the scrap heap. Workers need to do something and fight back like Visteon workers. We're expressing our solidarity with them now.”
Administrators KPMG said they had no choice but to close the three plants.
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Your Say YourWatford
Roy Stockdill, says...
10:43am Sun 26 Apr 09
That's the problem with trade unions - they're still living in the 1960s and '70s when they had real power and the Wilson and Heath governments were running scared of them. They long ago lost any teeth and are now just an irrelevant throwback to a different period of history - and I speak as a former NUJ FoC in Fleet Street.
I didn't realise Watford Trades Council still existed and I wondered what had happened to Jon Gamble since I have not heard his name in ages, whereas once upon a time he used to write lengthy and incredibly tedious, Stalinist diatribes to the WO letters pages in the days before the paper had a website.
As far as I recall he is a member of the Watford Socialist Workers' Party, who used to hold their AGMs in a telephone box before BT removed them all, and every time there was a protest in London Jon would have a letter in the WO urging people to join them. There were so many of these appeals that I once thought of buying shares in the coach company they used!
Jon has spent much of his life fighting lost causes and steadfastly refuses to accept the realities of life. However, we need people like him around to remind us how loony the hard Left used to be, and presumably still are.
Paradise Watford, says...
8:40am Mon 27 Apr 09
As union leaders if you do not understand these basic terms then I suggest that you hand over your position to someone that does.
It is very very regretable that all these people have been made redundant and we all feel for them, there's not many people out there in employment who don't worry about how the recession is going to affect their job after all.
But if the firm is bust, its bust regardless of what agreements where made previously. Striking if anything is just making the situation worse.
Hands up whose suprised that postal workers are being so suportive...
Roy Stockdill, says...
12:44pm Mon 27 Apr 09
When I was on local papers I often used to report meetings of Trades Councils, including in Watford when I first came here way back in the 1960s. They always consisted of hard-line Stalinists and Communists who thought we should all be living in a Soviet Union-style dictatorship. In other words, they were slightly loopy but harmless, since they never made much impact on anyone.
Nowhere in the above story can I see any mention of which union the Visteon workers actually belong to. However, as Paradise says, any protests are merely pie-in-the-sky naivety and clutching at straws. In any case, I am not sure how you can strike when you've already been sacked.
Once a firm has gone into administration, then it no longer has the power to negotiate with workers. Any bargaining for compensation or redendancy pay will have to be done with the administrators - but, frankly, if I were in their shoes I wouldn't hold out too much hope.
This, of course, is where Jon Gamble and his ilk live in some kind of dreamland in which they imagine money grows on trees!
hurricanes&butterflies, meriden says...
10:34am Tue 28 Apr 09
I bet a pound to a penny if you have kids,they left home at 16,i know i would have.A boring,bitter and friendless individual,whose only purpose in life is to outlive his mother-in-law so as to achieve what he failed to deliver off his own back.
Roy Stockdill, says...
1:21pm Tue 28 Apr 09
hurricanes&butterflies, meriden says...
6:22pm Tue 28 Apr 09
You keep on about how literate you are Roy but your morally bankrupt and what has your literacy enabled you to do?......Live at the bottom of my garden.Looks like a career in the press turned out to be a dead end as far as you and success go Roy as you measure everything by its material worth and you aint got a pot to p155 in lol.
Roy Stockdill, says...
2:03am Wed 29 Apr 09
Do you by any chance suffer from some kind of inferiority complex, living where you do? As it happens, I and my immediate family own property worth in excess of £1 million in Watford, Dorset and Warwickshire. Do you?
leftfield, Watford says...
6:29am Sat 2 May 09
Roy Stockdill wrote:It gives me great pleasure to report to the readers of the Watford Observer that the Visteon dispute has ended in an outright victory for the workers. One month ago these workers were sacked with no notice, no redundancy pay and no pension rights.It was lined up to be another sorry episode in the jobs massacre sweeping Britain. Visteon workers had other ideas and occupied their plants in Belfast, Enfield and Basildon. On Thursday, stung by what has gone one and fearing escalation, Ford caved in and paid up the money owed. Workers who were getting nothing are now getting payments up to £40,000 in redundancy pay. The result is a vindication of militant trade unionism. To read the facts about the Visteon dispute, I whole-heartedly recommend: www.socialistworker.
Passing motorists honking in support may sound dramatic, but it is hardly going to be translated into workers being given their jobs back, decent redundancy payments when the firm's gone bust or them getting new jobs.
That's the problem with trade unions - they're still living in the 1960s and '70s when they had real power and the Wilson and Heath governments were running scared of them. They long ago lost any teeth and are now just an irrelevant throwback to a different period of history - and I speak as a former NUJ FoC in Fleet Street.
I didn't realise Watford Trades Council still existed and I wondered what had happened to Jon Gamble since I have not heard his name in ages, whereas once upon a time he used to write lengthy and incredibly tedious, Stalinist diatribes to the WO letters pages in the days before the paper had a website.
As far as I recall he is a member of the Watford Socialist Workers' Party, who used to hold their AGMs in a telephone box before BT removed them all, and every time there was a protest in London Jon would have a letter in the WO urging people to join them. There were so many of these appeals that I once thought of buying shares in the coach company they used!
Jon has spent much of his life fighting lost causes and steadfastly refuses to accept the realities of life. However, we need people like him around to remind us how loony the hard Left used to be, and presumably still are.
co.uk. Watford TUC sends its best fraternal greetings to all thinking workers for May Day. We have a world to win.
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hurricanes&butterflies, meriden says...
5:41am Sun 26 Apr 09
Woolworths went bankrupt,id love him to explain how gouing without a wimper would have changed things.
These union guys are a breed apart,of course the posties will support them as they are out of touch aswell and want to be very careful...