Sunday 30 August 2009

The battle widens at Fujitsu

The campaign by UNITE and PCS over pay and pensions at Fujitsu, where I work, reached a crucial stage this week, with the end of the consultative ballots over industrial action.

UNITE & PCS members both returned overwhelming majorities for action.

This week we also had the announcement by Fujitsu of 1200 job cuts in the UK, putting roughly half the company's 12,500 UK staff at risk. An overlapping 4000 of us were already "at risk" because of the company proposal to dismiss and re-engage us without our pensions.

The offensive by the company against its workforce keeps growing, but thankfully the response from employees keeps growing too. UNITE and PCS reps have decided to add "jobs" to the existing "pay and pensions" campaign and to move quickly to a statutory industrial action ballot. It is already clear that another big wave of staff joining the unions has begun.

UNITE has issued a press release which is already getting coverage, such as this BBC report. PCS has also issued a press release about the job cuts. There is more detail on the ballot result and campaign plans on the UNITE Fujitsu "OurUnion" web site.



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