{"id":640,"date":"2009-05-05T10:12:08","date_gmt":"2009-05-05T10:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=640"},"modified":"2009-05-05T10:12:08","modified_gmt":"2009-05-05T10:12:08","slug":"visteon-workers-win-but-fight-continues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=640","title":{"rendered":"Visteon Workers Win &#8211; But Fight Continues"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the better pieces of news on <strong>May Day<\/strong> was that the occupation and picketing by sacked <em>Visteon <\/em>workers in Belfast, Enfield and Basildon and the strong support given by their union, <em>Unite<\/em>, has led to a greatly improved offer on severance pay, which the workers have now voted to accept.<\/p>\n<p>The deal, achieved through the kind of fighting spirit I witnessed on my visits to the plant at Enfield shortly after the <a href=\"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=618\" target=\"_blank\">factory occupation<\/a> started and when the workers <a href=\"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=623\" target=\"_blank\">came out of the works<\/a> following a court order has been described as &#8220;<em>ten times better<\/em>&#8221; than the initial offer, with most workers getting six months or a year&#8217;s pay. The campaign also benefited from considerable support by students and trade unionists who brought supplies and joined in the pickets and demonstrations at the plant.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mylondondiary.co.uk\/2009\/05\/01\/20090501-d1869.jpg\" title=\"\u00a9 2009 Peter Marshall.\" alt=\"\u00a9 2009 Peter Marshall.\" height=\"298\" width=\"450\" \/><\/p>\n<p>One of the workers from Enfield gave a powerful address at the <em>Trade Union May Day<\/em> rally in Trafalgar Square, stressing the need to stand up and fight for your rights &#8211; as these men and women did.<\/p>\n<p>However, despite this victory there is still a battle to be fought over pensions, which highlights our unsatisfactory laws governing company pension schemes.\u00a0 Legislation is needed to ensure that money paid into these by employees and employer should be entirely separate from company accounts and not something that can be lost.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mylondondiary.co.uk\/2009\/05\/01\/20090501-d0795.jpg\" title=\"\u00a9 2009 Peter Marshall.\" alt=\"\u00a9 2009 Peter Marshall.\" height=\"298\" width=\"450\" \/><\/p>\n<p>After the rally in Trafalgar Square, workers and supporters held a picket outside the offices of Visteon administrators KPMG just off Fleet Street (once of course the home of the UK Newspaper industry.)\u00a0 They demanded that their pension funds be restored to them.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mylondondiary.co.uk\/2009\/05\/01\/20090501-d0810.jpg\" title=\"\u00a9 2009 Peter Marshall.\" alt=\"\u00a9 2009 Peter Marshall.\" height=\"298\" width=\"450\" \/><\/p>\n<p>There were speeches from several of the workers, including Raymond who had spoken earlier at Trafalgar Square, as well as one of the local Unite officials. The picket was also supported by London anarchists, including members of the London Branch of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iww.org\/en\/branches\/UK\/London\" target=\"_blank\">IWW<\/a> (Industrial Workers of the World),\u00a0 and trade unionists.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/mylondondiary.co.uk\/2009\/05\/01\/20090501-d0785.jpg\" title=\"\u00a9 2009 Peter Marshall.\" alt=\"\u00a9 2009 Peter Marshall.\" height=\"298\" width=\"450\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the better pieces of news on May Day was that the occupation and picketing by sacked Visteon workers in Belfast, Enfield and Basildon and the strong support given by their union, Unite, has led to a greatly improved offer on severance pay, which the workers have now voted to accept. The deal, achieved &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=640\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Visteon Workers Win &#8211; But Fight Continues<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-own-work","category-political-issues"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}