| From Unity (Special Seagate edition), 3 November 2007 |
Poverty packageCrumbs for the workers as the bosses go on the runBy our industrial correspondentAs the Seagate bosses go on the run, the workers left out in the cold have been offered a poor package of redundancy payments. As this Unity extra is going to press, the offer of the management stands as follows:Workers who stay with the firm until its closure will receive six weeks’ pay for each year they were employed. If they leave Seagate earlier, this is being reduced to four weeks’ pay. This very poor offer makes no provision for the high number of people Seagate has been “hiring in” through employment agencies in recent years, including the almost 100 Polish workers. The firm has been taking on only agency staff during recent years. The seven-strong “employee forum” is going to be increased to fourteen members, and the bosses’ offer will have to go through a ninety-day consultation period. Many workers have been asking for a professional negotiator, feeling they will get a poor deal; the low level of organisation in trade unions is proving to be a great disadvantage now. Seagate has always been very hostile towards trade unions. It is interesting that none of the lamenting local politicians—Limavady’s mayor, Edwin Stevenson, and Gregory Campbell MP MLA included—point towards the fact that the right to organise in a union was more or less ignored by the firm. It may be too late to stop the company from running away to Malaysia, but it is not too late for workers to join a union now. Trade unions must immediately be involved in the negotiations with the Seagate management. With their expertise they could at least ease the terrible situation the capitalists have left more than nine hundred people and their families in. |
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