The environment

Stuff about nature etc.

Vestas: the RMT and Unite

Activists from the RMT union, which mainly covers rail, bus, and sea workers, joined the Vestas workers outside the factory from very early on. These were not full-time officials, but branch representatives from the RMT Portsmouth branch which organises the Portsmouth-Ryde ferry workers, especially Richard Howard, branch secretary, and Mick Tosh, branch chair. One way or another, they managed to work their union facility time and leave from work so as to be at the site almost 24/7, providing help and advice. It was a model of what good trade unionists should do: going to the aid of other...

An activist's diary: how the Vestas campaign started

I remember first hearing about a wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight being shut down at the Workers’ Liberty conference back in May. We decided that someone should go down there. Why did I volunteer? We’d been talking about “voluntarism” — the necessary element in socialist politics of making things happen by will-power and initiative. I travelled to the island on 15 June with two other AWL members, Ed Maltby and Pat Rolfe, and stayed for a couple of days to make contact with local labour movement activists. Members of the local Trades Councils had been campaigning around Vestas, but...

Vestas: can the Government be budged?

Many Vestas workers are becoming confident that Vestas bosses can be budged, to some degree at least. Many are less confident about budging the Government. But the Government was already shaky a month ago. It had already been forced to abandon its taboos against nationalisation and against higher taxes on the rich. Since then it has been forced to retreat on Royal Mail privatisation and on ID cards, to concede the long-demanded “Fourth Option” on council housing, and to renationalise East Coast mainline railways. The growing public storm about the Vestas closure puts pressure on a Government...

Come to Climate Camp!

Come to the Camp for Climate Action 2009! 27 August – 2 September, somewhere inside the M25. Preparations are under way for this year’s climate camp. Workers’ Climate Action invite all activists, militants, trade unionists and young people to come and help build a movement to fight the destruction of our planet. The camp will be held on a site in London in order to target the City of London. This year’s economic crisis has demonstrated more sharply than ever that the capitalist system offers no solution to the ecological disaster that faces us. Come both to discuss how we link up the fight...

Vestas: what you can do

• Come to the protest outside the Vestas factory — Monks Brook, St Cross Industrial Estate, Newport, Isle of Wight. • Send messages of support from yourself or your organisation to savevestas@gmail.com . • Send a donation from your trade union or other organisation, or make a personal donation: cheques payable to Ryde and East Wight Trades Union Council, 22 Church Lane, Ryde, Isle of Wight, PO33 2NB, or donate online at savevestas.wordpress.com . • Contact energy minister Ed Miliband. His phone number in his Doncaster constituency is 01302 875 462, and at Westminster, 020 7219 4778. Flood him...

Vestas: The workers united will never be defeated

Climate change is a global issue and the international workers’ movement has responded with messages of solidarity. One of the workers from Vestas is currently visiting Denmark, meeting trade unionists from the Danish parent company. Attempts are being made to get solidarity from the United Steelworkers Union which is trying to organise the workers at the US plant where Vestas plan to move production. At Ssangyong Motors, in Pyeongtaek near Seoul, South Korea, a workers occupation is now in its eighth week (see page 2). They sent this message to Vestas workers: “Ssangyong Motor workers are in...

Vestas workers and supporters speak out

Doug Green is a locked-out worker from the stores department at the Vestas St Cross factory . Initially, we had our doubts it was going to work. The further we go into this, the more the confidence is going to be built. What’s built my confidence? Public support; support from my family; the press coverage; and the number of people we’re getting down here to support us. This week has reinforced our view on what sort of people we’re dealing with in the Vestas management. We knew they were bastards before, but this has reinforced it. I have been in a union before. I was in Amicus when I worked at...

The police at Vestas

From Monday evening (20th) to Wednesday (22nd), the police were aggressive and very markedly on the side of Vestas bosses. They were especially hostile on Monday evening, but the aggressiveness continued for a couple of days. In one stand-off, they confronted Vestas worker Doug Green and told him that if he took one step further towards his own workplace, they would arrest him for “breach of the peace” and confiscate the food he was trying to take to the occupiers. Doug stayed put where he was, defying the police, for four hours. Some supporters were arrested for “breach of the peace”, the...

Vestas: The centre of both jobs and environment battles

The workers’ occupation at the Vestas wind turbine blade factory at Newport, Isle of Wight, is the centre of three great battles: on jobs, on the environment, and on renovating the labour movement. Workers occupied the factory on Monday 20 July to stop the bosses’ plans to shut the factory. Vestas bosses and police have been able to stop all but a few extra workers entering the factory to join the occupation, but hundreds of other workers and supporters have gathered outside the factory entrance to support the occupiers and demand the nationalisation of the factory to save jobs. Vestas bosses...

Thoughts on organising round Vestas

I’ve been thinking about solidarity activism around Vestas, after experiencing and talking about recent disputes like the tube cleaners, Visteon, SOAS occupation; comparing student occupations, workers occupations and things like climate camp, learning about some of the history of working-class direct action. Every group and individual seems to come at these struggles with differing ideas of what solidarity means and looks like, or as we often put it, “how solidarity can change the world”. I spent a good part of last year developing the WCA [Workers' Climate Action] network; what’s at stake in...

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