Irish auto workers continue sit-down

For a worker, losing a job is a devastating blow under any circumstances. All too often, the pain is compounded when a company gives short notice. Workers may be told only a few days or even a few hours beforehand that their jobs are gone.

Visteon, the auto parts maker spun off by Ford in 2000, may have set a record last month. On March 31 in Belfast, 210 workers were given six minutes’ notice that they were being terminated.

Yet the workers, who were members of the union Unite, refused to leave. “We have been left with no choice but to occupy the factory to save our jobs and to defend jobs for the people of Belfast,” stated Unite representative John Maguire.

Visteon workers in Enfield and Basildon, England, followed suit a day later after learning that their jobs were also on the chopping block. They occupied the plants for over a week. They left only after a court ordered them evicted, but they are still protesting outside their plants.

The Irish auto workers have been occupying the plant in the Occupied North now for almost a month. They are demanding the full severance—“redundancy”—payments that they were entitled to under the Ford contract.

At the time of the spinoff the workers were told that their contracts would mirror those at Ford, but the cash payments offered by KMPB, the current plant administrator, fall short of what they feel they are entitled to. Three weeks into the sit-down, KMPG offered a bigger settlement but the workers rejected it as inadequate.

The sit-down—the second in Ireland this year after the Waterford Crystal takeover—has united Irish nationalist and British loyalist workers in common cause. Gerry Adams, president of the nationalist Sinn Fein party and member of Parliament, personally visited the sit-downers.

“Ford controlled the purse strings and everything that was happening here,” Adams told the workers. He called Ford’s conduct “disgraceful.” Even an MP from the Democratic Unionist Party, whose constituents support continued British rule, came out against Visteon/Ford management.

Supporters have held rallies and picketed Ford dealerships to protest the rotten treatment of the Visteon workers. KMPG has sought a court order to have the occupiers evicted from the Belfast plant. The union vows that it will contest any eviction order.