Socialist Worker reports that the factory occupations by Visteon workers who were sacked in March without redundancy pay or pensions have been succesful:
Visteon workers have won a major victory against one of the biggest and most powerful multinational companies in the world – Ford.
The workers used to be employed by Ford until 2000 and were sacked at the end of last month. Ford tried to avoid its responsibilities, claiming that it owed the workers nothing.
But workers’ action has forced Ford to offer hundreds of thousands of pounds in redundancy packages. Many workers will get £40,000 or more. It is one of the biggest payouts that Ford has ever offered.
[…]
“The threat of taking action to Ford was the turning point. This offer sets a new benchmark too – if Ford try to sack workers elsewhere they won’t be able to just do it and give people nothing.
“People can see now that if you put up a strong enough fight you can win. This is a victory for workers and it’s about time we won something.â€
Around 600 workers across plants in Enfield, north London, Basildon in Essex and Belfast have been fighting back since the end of March, when they were sacked with no notice, no redundancy pay or pensions.
Socialist Worker also managed to find out that shutting down those factories was not due to the economic crisis so much as something the Visteon management had already planned to do eight years ago !
The fightback against the Visteon sackings shows workers’ self defence is possible, that strike and other action doesn’t need to be just a meaningless ritual on the part of the unions to get a slightly bigger scrap from the bosses’ table but can actually force them to meaningful concessions, that you can actually win the fight. With redundancy threats and bankruptcies looming in many other companies, this is good news. If only the union leadership was as militant.