Redundancy is a shocking experience. It disrupts your plans and hopes for your future.
Your company is also conveying a message: We do not care about you – profit is all that counts.
Of course, they don’t put it as bluntly as this.
Your CEO or manager will probably appear on the media and talk about how sad they are but it had to be done for ‘competitiveness’. But they mean: workers are worth nothing, profit is all that counts.
Our society is experiencing a 1930s style crash and we can no longer accept this. This is the 21st century and all of us have a Right to Work.
It is time to assert that people and our lives are more important than a company’s ‘bottom line’
If you are facing redundancy, socialists advise you to take the following steps:
❶ Call a meeting of your workmates to discuss the situation.
Elect people to represent you, either by endorsing your existing shop stewards or electing new representatives. Make sure that the meeting is conducted properly by asking people to vote for what they want.
❷ The first thing you need to decide is whether you want to oppose the redundancies or accept voluntary redundancies.
Your union officials will almost invariably urge you to accept voluntary redundancies.
Socialists, however, urge you to consider resistance: There is very little work out there and you need a wage packet now.
❸ Do some research on your company. Find out the following items:
n Are they making a profit? If they are suffering a temporary loss, what sort of profits did they make in recent years? How much do they pay their CEO?
n How much did your company get in state grants? Have they been paying proper taxes in this country?
n Are they re-locating or closing down in order to benefit from cheap labour? Or are they trying to intensify work for the remaining staff.
❹ Organise an occupation of your workplace to resist redundancy.
It is the only message that profit addicts understand. Remember: You have two great levers that help you.
n First, the company will want to get hold of the machines, office space or factory space to sell off or use elsewhere. You should use these as a bargaining lever to secure concessions.
n Second, as the government has been bailing out banks, the obvious question is: why can’t they bail out redundant workers?
❺ You should use the occupation as a base to launch a major campaign to demand that the government protect your right to work.
Tell them to recover any grants given to a company that has treated its workers like disposable products and to use that money to fund alternative employment.
Demand that the government either get you all places on community employment schemes on Pay Related Benefit or that they take the company into public ownership to guarantee jobs.
❻ Resistance will bring you some results – acceptance will give you nothing. Some might argue that this is very ‘radical’. But we are living in changed times.
When a US President like Barack Obama promises that the US state will help fund the creation of 3 million jobs, you know ‘the times they are a changing’.
We need real, radical change here and that will come through ‘people power’ – not taskforces, committees and crocodile tears.
If you want any further advice on resisting redundancies or want support for your actions, you can contact the industrial desk of the Socialist Workers Party on 01 8722682 or simply text REDUNDANCY to 086 3074060 and we will ring you back.
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