Strikes continue at Fujitsu

We had our third strike day today at Fujitsu Manchester, and two more have now been called for Wednesday and Thursday next week.

Check out our Unite @ Fujitsu web site for the latest news - and an "appeal for support" leaflet which includes how you can contribute to our strike fund.

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Organising strategy - mobilise or organise?

On 8th November I attended four fascinating meetings at the Historical Materialism conference with people from the USA and Canada discussing the plight of the labour movement and ideas for turning it round.

I found the debates really useful and there were a lot of ideas the British labour movement should engage with.  I've written up some of the key points as a series of three articles.  The first ("Mobilise or Organise?") is mainly about Jane McAlevey's ideas on organising strategy and has been published here.  The other two should be published over the next few days and will cover "Migration, the labour market and social reproduction" and "Reversing the decline".

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UNITE victory against offshoring at Capita IT Services

Many employers in the IT industry and beyond use the threat of moving work offshore to countries with low wages and few employment rights to try to persuade workers that it would be pointless or counter-productive to defend terms and conditions or fight for decent pay.

UNITE members at Capita IT Services, by voting to strike and calling action, have not only stopped the immediate threat of redundancies and jobs being moved offshore, but also secured a commitment to negotiate a new job security agreement.

This victory contains important lessons for workers in many industries - globalisation does not make workers powerless, if they get organised and are prepared to use the strength they have.

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Capita IT Services staff vote to strike over jobs

UNITE members at Capita delivered an impressive 4:1 vote for strike and 9:1 for action short of strike as part of their fight against redundancies, including plans to offshore their jobs to India.

Similar issues concern workers at many IT companies (and IT workers in other industries concerned about outsourcing) so many people will be hoping members win a a positive outcome to this dispute.

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Support CSC workers in Denmark

Members of the PROSA trade union in Denmark are in dispute over attacks on their terms and conditions which equate to a 30% pay cut. You can send a message of protest to CSC's boss here.

All the big multinational companies try to put pressure on pay and benefits by playing off one country against another. So it is outrageous that some CSC workers in the UK report pressure from the company to go over to Denmark to undermine the campaign of the workers here. It is obvious that if Danish workers get a worse deal, that will only increase the pressure for cuts here too.

The only way to defend pay and conditions here is to stand up to any bullying, and stand by our colleagues in Denmark.

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HP plans 1300 more job cuts in the UK

UNITE's press release highlights the butchery still going on in our industry.

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Will the Guardian and Observer offshore work to India?

UNITE members working in IT at Guardian News & Media are worried that the company plans to outsource their work and move it offshore, resulting in redundancies.

They've set up a "Unite against offshoring at the Guardian and Observer" group on Facebook - please join.

Do management really think this fits with their brand? Is it what their customers want? Let's ensure the members at GNM know they have broad support, and the management know how Guardian & Observer readers feel.

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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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Media finally begins to pick up Coop offshoring scandal

It is remarkable how little media coverage there has been of the plan to offshore to India work for Cooperative Financial Services (CFS) currently being carried out by Steria in Manchester - especially when this goes completely against the Coop's carefully cultivated brand image and is leading to threats of compulsory redundancies and a strike ballot.

Good to see this report, albeit in a fairly obscure publication.

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Cooperative, not! Steria dispute update.

UNITE has produced a helpful 1-page summary of the dispute at Steria in Manchester, where members are balloting for strike action against compulsory redundancies as jobs are offshored to India.

The jobs are providing IT services to Cooperative Financial Services (CFS), which is a merger of what used to be the Coop Bank and Cooperative Insurance Services (CIS).

It is vital that we see resistance to job losses starting as quickly as possible - this will be much harder as unemployment rises. Get those messages of support pouring in - the summary includes details of where to send them.

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JVC jobs under threat

JVC has announced its intention to close its East Kilbride plant, which makes LCD TVs, moving production to Poland in July, with the loss of over 300 jobs.

UNITE has quite rightly put out a damning press release, but what else are we going to do?

After 11 years of New Labour, we still have feeble employment rights that allow companies to quickly and cheaply throw us on the scrap heap in the pursuit of higher profits.

We need to campaign for stronger rights, but also use our industrial strength to protect jobs rather than merely relying on the law.

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Electrolux - not Polished off yet

The Electrolux cooker-factory in Spennymoor (in the north-east) is currently "under review", with the results expected in mid-December. [For media coverage, click here]

Workers believe the plant can make a profit. This in the context where a lot of work has already been moved offshore to Poland. The statement from the company talks about the need to return it to acceptable levels of profitability. Other plants have profit issues at least as bad, but are in countries where labour laws are stronger, or government takes more of an interest in protecting manufacturing. Only Spennymoor is "under review".

It's bad enough if your job is under threat because the company you work for goes bust. Far worse if your employer considers throwing you on the scrap heap simply because you're the easiest to chop to make more money elsewhere.

As usual, there are many angles to the situation. Electrolux were happy to accept public money - is it right they can now consider upping sticks without paying it back? When the government and companies are all supposed to be reducing carbon emissions, how can it make sense to close a plant in England, transfer manufacturing hundreds of miles away and ship the products over here? And what an indictment of Tony Blair's beloved free-market that yet another manufacturing plant in his old constituency is under threat. If it's right for the government to bail out the financial markets with billions of pounds, how can it be wrong to intervene to ensure we have a sound and sustainable industrial base?

If, as people fear, Electrolux decide to try to cut jobs, members in Spennymoor will need all our support.

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Job losses at Seagate

The Derry Journal carries an interesting story about job losses at Seagate.

Sadly, what's unusual about the report isn't the redundancies in our sector, the offshoring, the anti-union employer - or the lack of union recognition. It's an unusual approach to offer support to non-members in a redundancy situation - presumably this is part of a drive to organise the plants.

The Belfast Telegraph report gives a lot more of the background - 900 jobs to go as a company relocates production of hard-drive components to a "lower cost" plant in Malaysia.

Seagate have had over £12m in grants since 2001. Will they pay it back? This is an issue raised by many in our sector, as high-tech companies were encouraged to invest in the UK as more traditional manufacturing declined, only to up-sticks as grants dried up or cheaper opportunities became available overseas.

The Amicus 2005 conference endorsed an NEC statement (number 2) on Manufacturing, which said:

"local councils and grant awarding bodies should be directed to impose binding conditions when they offer assistance to businesses with corporate social responsibility clauses including financial penalties when jobs are exported and Amicus should support pension fund trustees in incorporating in to their corporate governance bodies suitable provision to support corporate social responsibility."

A similar point was in Composite Motion 1 on manufacturing:

"Campaign for Government powers to stop companies coming into the UK, obtaining national and local grants and then closing the company down when these are exhausted. Legislation is required to force companies to stay in a region for up to ten years to allow for community stability and security."

From memory, I think this part of the Composite came from a motion from the EEE&IT sector, which has suffered terribly from this problem.

The willingness of companies to milk grants and then move on suggests a more realistic view about offshoring. These companies are not investing in today's cheap-labour economies for the long-term or because of some commitment to international development. In many cases they will milk the local economy for a time, then move on. This is already happening with call-centres in India, where wages are rising, encouraging companies to seek out yet cheaper labour markets.

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