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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Age Discrimination & Minimum Wage

It is a ridiculous and unjustifiable anomaly that we now have legislation against age discrimination, but still a minimum wage set at a lower rate for young people. If young people are doing the same work, why shouldn't they get the same pay?

The argument that it would discourage employers from taking on young people is increasingly tenuous, when a key concern of many employers is the demographic changes meaning there are fewer young people leaving education and entering the workforce, forcing them to look more seriously at employing older people or those who would previously have been excluded from the workforce.

Good to see the TGWU section of UNITE lobbying for a better minimum wage, but what a shame this protest didn't have a higher profile.

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Equal Pay - No Pay Day

Tuesday was declared "No Pay Day" as the pay gap between women and men (still 17% on hourly rates or £4000 per year) equates to women working for free from 30th October each year.

It was a pure coincidence that this week at Fujitsu we've been discussing starting an Equal Pay Review. We've campaigned for this for several years, and a commitment to it was one of the positive steps in the agreements which settled our dispute earlier this year.

It's remarkably hard to find examples of employers who've carried through Equal Pay Audits to a conclusion. Of course, some may do so without fanfare. When will the government make them compulsory? Just making discrimination illegal doesn't make it go away unless we and the government actually do something.

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