Congratulations to UNITE members in engineering at HP, who have delivered a magnificent result in their industrial action ballot.
Let's hope that HP sees sense in the light of this demonstration of the strength of feeling. If not, we need to make sure that members get all the support they need.
PCS members elsewhere in HP have also voted for action over jobs and pay.
Awful news yesterday that Ericsson wants to close its Coventry plant with the loss of 700 jobs.
This must be particularly shocking for the staff who moved from the Stoke plant to Coventry only six months ago when that closed down.
As a press release issued by the local UNITE branch puts it:
"This will effectively be the end of the former Coventry based business that bought Marconi, formerly GEC-Telecommunications which at one time employed over 20,000 workers around Coventry."Ericsson want to save money (i.e. increase profits) by moving the work to lower-cost countries. This is further evidence that the issue of offshoring threatens jobs right across the skill and technology spectrum.
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The official call for strike action over Jobs, Pay & Pensions was issued yesterday, starting with strikes on Thursday 12th, Friday 13th and Monday 16th November.
Fujitsu had not accepted an offer of talks. The company has started telling members they are provisionally selected for redundancy, with the dismissals planned for 11th December. They also rejected all the proposals and alternatives put forward by reps in relation to the Defined Benefit pension fund. The company moved slightly, putting back the proposed date for closure of the scheme to existing members by a year, but offered no compensation or improvement to the standard Defined Contribution scheme. UNITE estimates this would be equivalent to a pay cut of around 20% for members.
All this from a company that is still highly profitable.
There's an "Appeal for Support" leaflet and a Collection Sheet on the front page of ourunion.org.uk.
PCS was also expected to call industrial action at Fujitsu, but I haven't seen any official announcement yet.