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The post Further Evidence Gaza Casualty Numbers Are Fake appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Don?t Be Fooled by the ?Britain is Growing? Fairytales Thu Mar 28, 2024 15:22 | David Craig
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The post Don’t Be Fooled by the ‘Britain is Growing’ Fairytales appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Climate: The Movie is a Perfect Cure for Climate Anxiety Thu Mar 28, 2024 13:00 | Toby Young
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The post Climate: The Movie is a Perfect Cure for Climate Anxiety appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link The WHO?s Plot to Seize Power Over Nation States in Future Pandemics Must Be Stopped Thu Mar 28, 2024 11:12 | Will Jones
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The post The WHO’s Plot to Seize Power Over Nation States in Future Pandemics Must Be Stopped appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Easter Quiz: Why Are White Things So White? Thu Mar 28, 2024 09:00 | Steven Tucker
It's hard to tell the difference these days between genuine news stories relating to 'anti-racist' ? or, more realistically, anti-white ? ideas and the spoofs and fakes. Pit your wits against our Easter quiz.
The post Easter Quiz: Why Are White Things So White? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

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Voltaire Network
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offsite link France opposes Russian Korean-style peace project in Ukraine Sat Mar 23, 2024 11:11 | en

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Direct Action Gets the Goods: Visteon Occupation Pays Off

category antrim | worker & community struggles and protests | news report author Thursday July 09, 2009 16:50author by Alan MacSimóin - WSM - Workers Solidarity 110author email wsm_ireland at yahoo dot com Report this post to the editors

The occupation of the Visteon motor parts factory in Belfast ended on May 3rd when the company gave in and agreed pay extra compensation of between six month’s and nearly two year’s money to the workforce for the loss of their jobs.
visteon.jpg

On April 1st workers, members of the UNITE trade union, were given just six minutes notice that the plant was closing down. The agreement that everyone would get the same terms as Ford workers if there were redundancies was torn up by management. There was nothing on offer, just an instruction to clear out lockers and go away. Workers, many of whom had given decades of service, were going to get only basic statutory redundancy money.

Visteon is moving production to countries with weak unions and very low pay, their only interest in Belfast (and the English plants at Basildown and Enfield) was as assets to be sold. The occupation, on its own, would have only been an irritation to management. However, talk of Ford workers refusing to handle any parts that had previously been supplied by the closed factories, worried management sufficiently to get them into talks.

Now it is true that the workforce didn’t get their jobs back. Occupations by relatively small factories in a recession-hit industry were not going to be able to achieve that. But the workers did walk away with between six months and almost two year’s extra money. They would not have got that by writing to MPs, signing petitions or “using the industrial relations machinery of the state”. It was when they decided to take direct action that they put themselves into a position where they could look for solidarity and exert real pressure on their bosses.

Visteon was a victory, militancy was shown to pay. Roger Madison of UNITE said “they’ve only been offered this because of the actions taken, to lock themselves in a plant for nearly a month. It’s refreshing - it’s old-fashioned trade unionism.” If we want to create a different political climate where working people have the confidence to stand up for themselves, this is exactly the sort of action we need to encourage.

Related Link: http://www.wsm.ie
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