Threat to Ericsson Coventry

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.

Let's hope UNITE can mount a successful campaign to defend the jobs.

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UNITE NEC, GEC, Executive - what?

Unsurprisingly, quite a lot of visitors to this site are looking for information about the UNITE Executive Council and its meetings. Unfortunately, they aren't all finding what they want because of inconsistent terminology.

The Amicus Executive was called the National Executive Council (NEC). The TGWU Executive was called the General Executive Council (GEC). The UNITE Executive is called the Executive Council (EC).

To help you find what you're looking for, I am going to use the label "Executive Council" for posts about the UNITE body from now on.

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Telent pensions - who do you believe?

The saga of the Pensions Corporation's efforts to raid the pensions of GEC, Marconi and Telent employees continues.

Despite pressure from UNITE and a helpful ruling from the Pensions Regulator, the takeover of Telent by the Pensions Corporation did go ahead.

The new owners want to present the picture as all roses, as this BBC report reflects. You don't have to look far to find out that not everyone's minds are at rest yet. The very same day UNITE issued this press release, and the web site Global Pensions still reports difficulties.

Of course the other major worry with this takeover is for jobs. The name of the company "Pensions Corporation" gives you a clue that their business interests might not be quite the same as what Telent's were.

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Telent, Marconi & GEC Pensions

The obligation to pay off defecits in order to close a pension scheme has given some comfort and protection to employees in many companies. The trend to sell pension schemes to finance companies is now beginning to undermine this.

Telent is the current name for what's left of the services part of what was Marconi. Despite massive job losses over recent years, it still employs about 2000 people in the UK - a mixture of engineers based in the field and sites in Coventry, Lancashire and London.

On 25th September it was announced that Telent had been bought by "Pension Corporation", based in Guernsey.

Fears are now rising that the new owners may try to raid the pensions of current Telent employees, as well as pensioners who worked for Marconi and GEC in the past. UNITE is lobbying MPs representing the workers and pensioners.

Let's hope that big business hasn't found yet another way of transferring assets from working people to themselves!

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