britains flexible workforce

[borders]

Fury as Cowley workers sacked with hour’s notice
by Sadie Robinson

The contrast couldn’t be starker. Bankers who have helped to wreck the economy are handed billions of pounds of public money and left to keep raking in their fat salaries.

Meanwhile hundreds of car workers who have slogged away on production lines for years are thrown on the dole with just an hour’s notice.

BMW’s sacking of 850 workers at its Cowley plant in Oxford on Monday offers a snapshot into the contempt with which bosses treat workers in Britain.

The job cuts had clearly been planned for some time, yet bosses waited until the last minute to tell workers they were sacked.

Workers reacted with fury.

A video recording of the sackings has been posted on the YouTube website. It shows workers booing and heckling throughout the announcement.

The bosses were shameless.

Not content with telling people they had no job with immediate effect, they went on to advise workers that they would receive just one week’s pay in lieu of any notice.

They also had the cheek to demand that workers return their uniforms and ID cards “on your way out” or face a deduction of £35 from their final wage.

Disgraceful

Despite being employed by an agency, many of the workers had been at the plant for several years. Because they are agency workers they don’t have the same rights to redundancy payments as “permanent” staff.

Roger Freitis, who had worked at Cowley for two years, told a local newspaper, “It’s not just the job cuts, it’s how they did it which is disgraceful.

“An hour before the end of our shift they round us up and say we are going. We’ve been here all weekend asking what is going to happen and they say nothing. I’ve got a mortgage and a child. I don’t know what to do.”

Workers were understandably furious with their bosses. But some of the most bitter anger was aimed at the Unite union that allegedly represents them at BMW.

In the video recordings of the sackings, workers can be heard shouting, “Where’s the f***ing union?”

Union representatives, who were standing in the room next to the managers, were then forced to respond. Much of what they say is indistinguishable from the bosses.

“We have tried to negotiate,” they claimed. “This is the climate that we’re living in – it’s happening everywhere.”

“It’s not us that are getting rid of you,” they pleaded, to boos from the workers, who demanded that the union repaid them all the subs they had paid over their years of working at the firm. It became apparent that union officials had been aware of the impending job losses and – even in the face of much questioning from the workers – had kept them in the dark.

“Why didn’t you appeal,” someone shouts. “We asked you yesterday what was happening and you said you didn’t know – that was a lie,” says another.

Adam Mason, an assembly line worker, summed up the mood of the workers when he told the local paper, “Clearly someone knew this was going to happen. It seems they have been having meetings so someone must have known.

“Where has the union been all this time? Why did I bother paying my subscription? They did nothing for us.

“The government has done nothing in this recession apart from hand money to the banks and bankers. Why can’t they help us?”

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[borders]

this is an example of the Governments idea of having a modern , flexible workforce, what they really mean is easy to hire and easy to fire. this is why as a body of people , us posties we must remain united and and solid , else otherwise if they split us up many of us will end up like these car workers with no voice and maybe no job.

[borders]

It’s one law for them... and another law for us
Compare the treatment of a disgraced banker like Andy Hornby with BMW workers like Roger Freitis, sacked at an hour’s notice

Disgraced bank boss Andy Hornby

Wrecked the HBOS banking group but pocketed £1.3 million in bonuses
Left the bank with a £2.4 million pension pot
Now a ‘consultant’ with Lloyds TSB and scraping by on £66,000 a month

Former BMW worker Roger Freitis

Worked for BMW on a temporary contract for two years but sacked with an hour’s notice
Helped to make his firm £3.4 billion in profits in 2007
Now on the dole with a child and mortgage. --[ taken from the SWP paper.]

[Tman]

Usual SWP tosh.
Hard luck on the poor sods who're out of work, but no-one forced them to remain agency workers for five years etc. What did they expect as agency workers then, the same rights as regular employees?

I'm sure all those BMW employees were saying "that's unfair,so please lay us regular workers off too", just like us RM staff would.

Hey, perhaps the SWP will do what it always does, and send two "duffel-coated ones" to try and get the remaining staff to go on an indefinite strike........

[borders]

you kill me Greavsie

[DGP1]

That's the problem with agency staff, they are only supposed to be temporary but end up working the same as regular employed staff (sometimes for years) but they have no protection.

It's about time contract/agency staff where made permenant after 6 months and if they are let go just before that time and the employer tries to fill it again with another temporary person then the company should be fined (something substantial like £50k per person).

[carpbarbel]

just thinking if the cwu and unite are of the same breed i'm allright jack. we will see.

[dvbuk55]

It's the same the whole world over,
It's the poor what gets the blame,
It's the rich what gets the pleasure,
Isn't it a blooming shame"

[banner18]

Yeh, but its kept going by the poor constantly struggling to get richer. We play their game and lose. Im thinking of getting a tent and some potatoes for growing and living in a field hehe. The system would collapse if we all just concentrated on getting just the means of survival instead of wanting all the mod cons, big houses and cars etc.... remember we don't need any of these things really to survive, so at the end of the day, like I said, we play their game don't we?

[norbert]

That's the problem with agency staff, they are only supposed to be temporary but end up working the same as regular employed staff (sometimes for years) but they have no protection.

It's about time contract/agency staff where made permenant after 6 months and if they are let go just before that time and the employer tries to fill it again with another temporary person then the company should be fined (something substantial like £50k per person).

BT are just the same as BMW , Agency workers who have been there a long time , there is lobbying and pressure from the usual suspects , problem is that Blue Labour have the same pressure from the CBI etc to get things stopped or at least watered down , hence the mixed messages .

It suits BMW as they don't have to pay leave , sickness , redundancy and they can play staff up against each other AND the Union .

A legacy of Tony's - Flexible Britain and Major's Insecure Britain before that - they don't need the Wolfies to stir it up

[Yahoorsur]

'Hard luck on the poor sods who're out of work, but no-one forced them to remain agency workers for five years etc. What did they expect as agency workers then, the same rights as regular employees?'

IMHO Tman,the union should have been fighting after 12-18months to get these folk taken on,just because it's the law does'nt make it right
This whole culture of temps,casuals and flexability is a crock of s**t.
my own family's experience of this type of thing is that tomorrow my brother in law finishes up with the Tetley factory in Boro,he's been with them just under a year,they are getting rid of him,but they have told him to go down to the agency that now handles all their recruitment and he may get back in as a agency worker,(on a lower rate) as I said what a crock of s**t,the uk labour laws are,when NU labour was elected,I think we all expected fairness,we got more of the same Neo-lib agenda thats drove us to the point of economic depression

[pocky20]

fell sorry for the workers that lost there jobs.like there are some rm temps at my place who have been with rm just over a year and have been told they are going at the end of the month.i cant work out how 1 of the temps got made perm and not the rest.now they changed it so they could go for a duty but the duty they went for is only part time and were told they wold deefo be going i alwasy thought you had to get made perm after a year i got made perm well before a year any one know anything ta

[axeman]

If only bmw was upfront they would have offered those agency workers a full time job teaman now in the real world where greed takes presedence over everything those workers were not offered that by an employer who's main concern is profit . However if they hire agency workers they don't have to contribute towards pensions etc so the exploitation goes on but of course you'd condone this wouldn't you ?????

[k979aaa]

It's the same the whole world over,
It's the poor what gets the blame,
It's the rich what gets the pleasure,
Isn't it a blooming shame"

It is called GLOBALISATION which i did a post on here some time ago it is the main factor of pitting the working man against the working man while the rich get even richer!.

[Yahoorsur]

A letter fae the Gruniad this morning


The Guardian, Thursday 19 February 2009 Article historyThe EU directive which will give agency workers in the UK protection against dismissal with minimal notice and no redundancy will be implemented in 2009 - too late to protect the 850 car workers at BMW Cowley (BMW accused of scandalous opportunism after scrapping 850 jobs at Mini factory, 17 February).

Labour and other MEPs working for many years on the need to protect workers in "atypical" forms of employment such as temporary work have warned that the massive increase in new forms of working such as agency work would create a two-tier working situation where some agency workers, particularly in manufacturing, would be doing the same job as their full-time counterparts, often working for many years, but lacking basic entitlements to equal pay, overtime, breaks, holidays, and so on.

It is the case that many agency workers make an active choice to work in this way across the public and private sectors, and often earn relatively good incomes. But with as many as 1.4 million agency workers in the UK, an increasing number are extremely vulnerable during periods of downturn. It is right that MEPs took the long view on how vulnerable this group would become and legislated for basic protections. The UK government will now have to transpose the directive into UK law, most probably in this parliamentary term. The directive will give equal rights in most areas after 12 weeks.

In the run-up to the European elections this year it is important that voters see the dividing lines between legislators who want to build in a social dimension in Europe of basic employment protection in an uncertain globalised economy and those who reject this approach. Flexibility in our economy is important, but so too is the Cowley car worker who left the plant yesterday with one hour's notice and nothing to show for five years of skilled work on the assembly line.
Claude Moraes MEP
Labour, London


it's taken 12 years to get to this,that working folk are entitled to be treated with a modicum of dignity and respect,it will be interesting to see how much is enacted into UK law.