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Bosch, P&O, British Gas...
fightback needed
now to save jobs
t
housands of workers
across Britain have seen their
jobs swept away this week.
●At the Bosch car parts plant in
Miskin, near Cardiff, bosses announced
about 900 jobs will go. The other major
employer in the area is steel-maker
Corus, which is cutting more than 1,000
jobs at Port Talbot.
●Trade unions say British Gas is
planning to axe up to 5,000 jobs.
The job losses will impact on sites at
Stockport, Edinburgh, Addingstone
near Glasgow, Leicester, Leeds, Cardiff,
Oldbury in the West Midlands and
Southampton.
●P&O Ferries will stop its crossings
from Portsmouth to Bilbao in Spain at
the end of September threatening over
250 jobs.
In every case profit is coming before
people’s lives. At Bosch plant director
Adam Wilmott said production was
going to Hungary because labour costs
there “are only 65 percent of those in
Cardiff.”
✸Resistance needed
The trade unions need to organise a
wave of resistance against these job
cuts. And of they won’t do it then
workers must push for it themselves.
There are some very good recent
examples of how to fight for jobs. Unite
union members at Visteon car parts
occupied their plants at Enfield and
Belfast when they were sacked at six
Right to Work
Conference
●Fight for every job ●Stop
the cuts ●Defend services and
pensions
Speakers include Mark Serwotka,
Tony Kearns, and Jerry Hicks.
Saturday 30 January, Central
Hall, Oldham St, Manchester.
Sign up today at
www.righttowork.org.uk
minute’s notice. The occupation forced
Ford, the parent company, to pay out
millions of pounds extra. Haiti: suffering
At Waterford Glass workers occupied
their plant and saved hundreds of jobs. poor abandoned
At Vestas wind turbines on the Isle of Tens of thousands of people in Haiti
Wight an occupation made front page are dead and hundreds of thousands
news across the world and won some more wounded or homeless after the
concessions for the workforce. earthquake that tore through the
All out strikes saved jobs and country on Tuesday.
conditions at Leeds bins and Tower People across the world will feel
deep sympathy for those who have
Hamlets College in east London. lost so much, and a great desire
Workers need to organise for a to help. Earthquakes are natural
fightback wherever jobs are under events: but the scale of the suffering
threat. depends on where they happen and
The firms making these cuts are not what assistance the victims receive.
small operations. If they don’t back off The world’s great powers have
been criminally slow to respond.
then workers need to strike and occupy. They have dragged their feet while
huge numbers of people are left
✸Come to conference without food or clean water and have
The Right to Work conference in to sleep in the open.
Manchester on 30 January will bring The US can always get a Cruise
missile to its target anywhere in the
together workers who have been world. There is never a lack of money
involved in the fightback, those who for a military “surge”. But there’s
face struggles now, and a host of other always delay and lack of resources
trade unionists and campaigners. when poor people suffer.
Everyone should get there and be Haitians will not get even 1
percent of the trillions handed out to
part of discussing and organising united the bankers to shore up the financial
resistance (see advert). system.
Already there is a renewed fight at The destruction in Haiti is so
British Airways, where a strike ballot serious because of its extreme
begins on 22 January, and a national poverty, and because it has suffered
strike ballot across the civil service from two centuries of imperialist
intervention.
starting on 7 February. There should be massive aid
This is the sort of response needed to Haiti, and an end to the UN
everywhere to save jobs and halt the occupation of the country.
devastation of communities.
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