NEWS & LETTERS, August - September 2009
World in View
UK plant occupied
by Gerry Emmett
Workers occupied the Vestas St. Cross wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight July 20 to Aug. 7. They are calling for the plant to be nationalized under the workers' control. Vestas is the only wind turbine factory in the UK, which has thousands of such turbines in use, and plans for increasing their number.
Some speculate that the company just wants to mothball the plant until the current economic crisis picks up and a new group of workers could be found to fill the jobs of those who are fired now.
Although it's a "green" business, Vestas has hardly been friendly to its work force. One worker described it this way: "Vestas bought out NEG Micon in 2003, and since that time things just got worse as it tried to squeeze the last drop of work out of everyone, sapping them dry. Long hours in a highly stressful environment and fear of repetitive strain injuries amongst other conditions have given it a very high staff turnover. It is extremely anti-union and some workers who have joined unions have been singled out and fired on various grounds. The nearest thing to a union was a consultation network imposed by European law, where supposedly elected representatives (but in reality hand-picked by management) attended meetings where they had no input whatsoever, and were forced to relay management diktat to the rest of the workers."
When management announced that the factory was stopping production at the end of July, workers began to organize among themselves. Although there was no union, there were activists present from Workers' Climate Action, the Alliance for Workers Liberty, and other left groups, and workers held a public meeting and formed a committee to plan the occupation.
There has been good community support. The closure of Vestas would be a blow to the Isle of Wight economy which otherwise might have to return to tourism. Local people and fellow Vestas workers challenged police lines to bring in food to the occupiers. The Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers and the Fire Brigades Union, among others, lent support as the struggle came to national attention.
Matt, the worker quoted above, brought out the range of issues involved here: "None of us involved in this occupation ever thought we would take part in anything like this. We quickly realized that we were at the center of a perfect storm; we had a golden opportunity to seize the factory and force the issues of green energy, massive job losses and corporate responsibility into the international spotlight. We knew we had to step up and take action, as this was bigger than all of us put together."
Although bailiffs forced an end to the occupation, the struggle continues.
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