Britain: Vestas workers end occupation, but `the campaign is anything but over'

Dear friend,

Thank you for the support you have given to the campaign to save the jobs at Vestas, Isle of Wight, making wind turbine blades. There is still a lot you can do!

Although the occupation ended on Friday 7th August, that was far from being the end of the campaign. The Vestas workers now intend to picket the plant at Newport, Isle of Wight, to prevent Vestas from taking back complete control of it, and the machinery and the turbine blades that are still inside.

The Vestas workers and their supporters are stepping up their campaign to put pressure on the Government to intervene to save these green jobs. This coming Wednesday 12 August has been declared a national day of solidarity with Vestas workers.

Supporters around the country are organising their own rallies and meetings, and, ideally, attempting to get workers to stop work for a time, on that day. You can keep up to date with what is planned on the Save Vestas blog http://savevestas.wordpress.com/travel-noticeboard/. If you would like help organising or advertising a protest, please let us know. Email savevestas@googlemail.com. We have a sheet of tips on how to organise protests.

Attached with this email there is also a general leaflet that you could give out to the public.

At the East Cowes Vestas factory a group of supporters are staging a rooftop protest. You can keep up to date with that on our blog. They are in touch with Vestas workers to discuss how they can coordinate their activities.

It is possible to win this campaign, through keeping up the momentum and contacts made already during the occupation. There are suggestions for ways you can help below. The main focus will be to build and maintain the picket, but meetings and fundraising can help to do that, through encouraging people to visit or paying for transport to the Isle of Wight and for the expenses of those supporters who are staying on the Island to help maintain the picket.

Please circulate this message to anyone that you think might be interested. Thank you.

Save Vestas campaign

http://savevestas.wordpress.com / savevestas@googlemail.com

Ways you can help

·         Send messages of support to savevestas@googlemail.com.

·         Send a donation from your trade union or other organisation, or a personal donation: cheques payable to ‘Ryde and East Wight Trades Union Council’ can be sent to Ryde and East Wight TUC, 22 Church Lane, Ryde, Isle of Wight, PO33 2NB or donate via the PayPal button at http://savevestas.wordpress.com.

·         Contact energy minister Ed Miliband. Email MILIBANDE@parliament.uk. His phone number in his Doncaster constituency is 01302 875 462, and at Westminster, 020 7219 4778. Flood him with calls for the Government to take over the Vestas factory and keep it producing, under new management.

·         Organise a visible demonstration of solidarity. Take a photo with a placard that reads “Save Vestas” and email the photo to savevestas@googlemail.com.

·         Sign the petitions http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/SaveVestas/ on the No.10 site and http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/press_for_change/vestas_petition_20414.html on the FoE website.

From http://savevestas.wordpress.com/2009/08/16/the-fight-on-the-isle-of-wight-saturday-15-august/

About 150 Vestas workers and supporters marched through Ryde, Isle of Wight, on 15 August 2009.

The demonstration was part of a plan to take the campaign to all parts of the Isle of Wight. Most protest has until recently been concentrated in Newport, the county town of the island and the site of the main Vestas wind turbine blade factory.

Next Saturday, 22nd, there will be a demonstration in Sandown.

A Vestas workers’ Ryde support group, made up of local people, is now being established: for more details, email portsmouth@rmt.org.uk.

Chairing the rally at the start of the demonstration, Mike Godley, one of the workers who occupied the Newport factory from 20 July until evicted on 7 August, read out web postings which attacked the campaign for the Government to nationalise the wind-turbine blade factory and save the jobs as something created or manipulated by socialist and other activists who have come to the Isle of Wight from the mainland.

To great applause, he refuted the attacks, saying that the socialists and environmental activists who have come to the island, many camping on a roundabout outside the factory, have mde a valuable and welcome contribution to a struggle which continues to be the Vestas workers’ own.

On Friday 14 August, Vestas paid outstanding wages and redundancy money into the bank accounts of workers made redundant. The redundancy date was originally set for 31 July, then, as a result of the occupation, put back to 12 August.

Many workers remain determined to fight on. On our best information, Vestas bosses plan to start sending “clean-up” teams into the Newport and East Cowes factories on 17 August. Can they do that without protest?

Even if they can get the “clean-up” teams, can they get out the yet-to-be-finished blades and the equipment which they want to remove from the factories? They cannot come out by road, but have to go onto barges (in Newport, over a public cycle path) at high tide.

The workers’ pickets at the factory gates must and will continue.

Meanwhile, the ripples of solidarity with the Vestas workers spread even further. New support groups are being set up even now. The next national day of action on 9 September, held at a time when labour movement is reviving after the summer holidays, can be bigger than the one on 12 August.

From http://savevestas.wordpress.com/2009/08/16/reply-to-guardian-report-wednesday-12-august/

The Guardian wrote a report about the closure of Vestas, date Wednesday 12 August. WCA and some of the Vestas workers sent a reply (not published), which we publish below. The original Guardian report is underneath.

Dear Editor,

Further to your report (“Vestas factory closes despite campaign”), and in spite of the redundancies announced at Vestas, Isle of Wight yesterday, the campaign to save the only major wind turbine blade manufacturer in the UK is not something in the past but remains an urgent cause for unions and green activists, and for many of the Vestas workers (both current and recently sacked or laid off).

Why? Because the fundamental issues have not changed: the decision to stop making wind turbine blades on the Isle of Wight does undermine the government’s promise of a “green revolution” that would usher in significantly more renewable energy production and more green jobs.

Moreover, issues that urgently need addressing have emerged during the campaign, not least that Vestas probably only intend to mothball the plant and would recommence production if the price were right, either in government subsidies, or because the market picked up.

One of the questions that we all – campaigners, both environmental and trade union, and all working people – need to examine is whether we can let job creation, and the transition to renewable energy production that we need, rest on the short-term business decisions of private companies whose guiding principle is their bottom line. We argue that we cannot. We need to act as a public collectively, in our collective interest, including, if necessary, taking over plants and industries that cannot or will not deliver the change we need.

The government also needs to recognise that when it pins its hopes on partnership with private companies, it is often getting into bed with employers who treat their workforce with contempt. Vestas’ proposal to look again at the cases of the ‘Vestas Eleven’, who occupied the plant and who they sacked, has little to do with Vestas’ fair-mindedness and much to do with the fact that the workers’ picket of the factory is continuing and Vestas would like it to end.

Chris Ash, Andy Mackenzie, Luke Paxton, Mark Smith, Mark Stringer, Tracey Yeates – Vestas workers
Edward Maltby - Workers’ Climate Action

——

Guardian article:

Vestas factory closes despite campaign

• Windfarm maker ends Isle of Wight plant production
• Site had been occupied by angry workers for 18 days

by Paul Lewis and Gwladys Fouché in Aarhus
Wednesday 12 August 2009 19.02 BST

The Danish windfarm company Vestas told more than 400 UK employees today that they had been made redundant, marking the official closure of its Isle of Wight factory that had been occupied for 18 days by angry workers.

The campaign to save the only major wind turbine blade manufacturer in the UK became a cause celebre for unions and green activists, who argued the move undermined the government’s promise of a “green revolution” that would result in the installation of 10,000 wind turbines by 2020 and create thousands of jobs.

Describing the closure of the factory as an “absolutely necessary commercial decision”, Vestas repeated its complaint about the slow pace of growth in the onshore wind turbine market in the UK.

The company, which is moving the production of wind turbine blades to the US, had planned to convert the Isle of Wight factory to make blades more suitable for the UK market. The decision was reversed in April, in part because of what the company said was the UK’s “local planning process for onshore wind power plants”.
About 11 workers at the Newport plant began occupying an office building on the site on 20 July. The sit-in came to an end last week after a court order authorised bailiffs to remove the workers.

However, the dispute delayed the company’s plans and meant the consultation process which should have permitted the company to close the factory gates at the end of last month was not completed until yesterday, when Vestas said it had made 425 workers redundant, including a small number based in Southampton.

The company said 40 employees had been found new jobs on a research and development facility on the island, which recently received a government grant, and a further 57 are being kept on to help close the site, a process a spokesman said would probably take “months, not weeks”.

Ditlev Engel, the CEO of Vestas, told the Guardian the company could review its decision to strip the 11 workers identified as participating in the sit-in of their redundancy benefits. “The last thing we wanted was to have this confrontation,” he said. “Coming back to the 11 people, we will have to revisit, to look at that.”
Asked whether it meant Vestas would change its decision to dismiss the men and remove their redundancy package, Engel said, “I am not ruling anything out”.

Engel urged a review in the country’s planning laws, which he said were hampering the development of wind energy. “In the UK, there is a clear division between what the government would like to see happening and what certain local politicians want to see happening, or rather not want to see happening … there is not necessarily the same ambition levels,” he said, adding the government needed to invest in the electricity transmission grid to make it more friendly to wind energy.

Sean McDonagh, 32, a Vestas worker maintained the campaign has succeeded in holding the government to account on its spending priorities. “We, the taxpayer, have had to bail out the banks – an industry that’s not working,” he said. “The renewable sector is something that has got to work.”

A group of demonstrators blocked the entrance to the Newport plant and erected a huge tripod at the entrance to prevent blades from leaving the factory.

The Vestas dispute came to the attention of the public in July when workers who had been made redundant decided to take action and occupy the factory. Since then, they have ensured that a constant blockade has been in place to stop the turbines from leaving the factory in order to prevent its closure.

"We see it as our duty to stop our blades from leaving as part of the campaign to nationalise the factory," one of the protesters said.

"Vestas have told us that there is no demand for our products but are still unwilling to sell the site to other interested parties.

"We are calling on the government to invest in green jobs on the Isle of Wight and for Vestas to reinstate the 11 sacked workers who occupied the factory."

The action comes a week before a protest and lobby - backed by the RMT and PCS unions - which will be urging Environment Minister Ed Miliband to commit to creating more green jobs.

Battersea and Wandsworth trades councilspokeswoman Nadine Houghton said: "This isn't just about one factory, this is about the future of the planet - which is in grave danger if action on a mass scale isn't taken to tackle climate change."

Whose Factory? Our Factory! Whose Blades? Our Blades!

http://savevestas.wordpress.com/2009/09/13/whose-factory-our-factory-whose-blades-our-blades-an-invitation-from-the-blade-blockade/

September 13, 2009 -- At the end of August Vestas rapidly started shipping out a secret stockpile of 500 wind turbine blades from the warehouse in Southampton to the USA. Three boats carrying more than half these blades have left…

Preventing the movement of the remainder of these blades and of the machinery is our best leverage in winning our demands from the government and Vestas management:

The occupying workers who were sacked must be reinstated with full redundancy pay, and the government must act to take wind energy production under public owenership.

We believe that wind energy belongs to the people, and that it is workers who have built this factory and made these blades. It is our side that have demonstrated the determination to guarantee the future of renewable energy and the creation of socially useful jobs for all. It is long overdue to take back the power from the likes of Vestas and the politicians who work to defend their profits.

Join the Newport blockade

Vestas are now trying to clear out and remove the remaining blades in Newport so that they can shut down the factory that workers and activists have been fighting to reopen.

Since the occupation of the building was evicted we have been picketing the Newport site 24 hours. We believe this blockade has so far forced Vestas to delay their plans. On Wednesday 10th September we set up a scaffold-pole tripod, a major obstacle, but it will be a show of strength from the people of the island that can turn the tide.

We will have two hours notice of the Blade Runner barges leaving Southampton, giving everyone on the island time to get down and stop the blades from going.

Like the well-established Magic Roundabout solidarity camp, the new Marine Gate camp is an inspiring place to be: There is plenty of space to camp with a great view of the river and sunrises.

Action Training

On Monday we will be getting together to prepare for the blockade and for the national day of action on Thursday 17th September. Hannah, a Climate Camp action-support trainer, originally from Newport, is coming to run an afternoon of skill-sharing and planning. We’ll do games and exercises, scout around and exchange information and ideas. We can think through and practise how we can respond to the eventuality of Vestas trying to push on to get the blades out. And then we’ll have dinner together by the fireside.

From the beginning the occupying workers have been clear that this was not only a fight for their jobs, but it was part of a wider struggle for the right to meaningful and socially useful work for all. This campaign has received support across the island, across the trade union movement, and among all those who believe that now is the time to defend ourselves and our planet with our deeds. We must act now to reopen the wind turbine factory.

Training
Monday 14th September, 1pm – 6pm (then dinner).
Meet at the Marine Gate, on the Newport-Cowes cycle path.
Call Robin on 07974 331 053
or e-mail savevestas@gmail.com
www.savevestas.worpress.com