Most fascinating thing to have caught my attention since my return from holiday - along with the secondary school bidder presentations this week (more of that later) - is the following comment from our Tory MP regarding the Vestas closure:
“I have had a number of meetings with Government Ministers about the work they had undertaken with Vestas prior to the announcement that they planned to close the factory on the Island. It was very clear to me that they had explored every avenue in order to work with the company to keep the factory open.
“I attended a public meeting on Friday 3rd July in the Riverside Centre organised by Cowes Trades Council and Workers Climate Action and a number of people there expressed the view that simply pumping yet more public money into the factory would keep it open.
“I understand how important this is to the Island but to be fair to the Government I do think they have worked hard to try to keep the Vestas factory here on the Island. It is easy to simply knock the Government as the Liberal Democrat spokesman has done (although to be fair he couldn’t have known what has gone on behind the scenes) but
when a hugely profitable multi-national company simply decides that it wants to close down a factory regardless of the consequences on it’s workforce or the local economy it seems that there is little that can be done.
That is one of the reasons why it is important that public money is invested in businesses that are firmly rooted in local economies.”
11 comments:
I agree with every word that Andrew Turner wrote there, and I think Workers Climate Action simply hadn't grasped the situation. The Trades Council did what it had to do to defend island jobs, but it would not have been good for the economy generally for government to pump money into this company, however tragic its loss for all the people affected by it. The track record of bribing private companies not to outsource is a poor one; the comparison with the banks that some made was actually pretty fatuous, frankly: industry depends on a solvent banking sector - it doesn't depend on Vestas staying on the Isle of Wight. Nor should we be looking for lots of new and exciting ways for government to spend our money, in this case by propping up a company that doesn't even need propping.
I hope those who call for special subsidies and special treatment for the Island will actually learn something from this episode: we're not going to get help from outside to shore up our economic infrastructure and we demean ourselves when we continue to seek it. Yet we've done so for at least 40 years to my knowledge. It really is time for a re-think.
In one form or another, Vestas has been paid huge sums, millions, to locate its activities here on the island. As Andrew points out, despite all those bribes, when they feel like it, they're off and to hell with the impact on staff. This has nothing to do with our dislike of the damn silly turbines they produce. Supporters of large scale wind turbines are as ludicrous as the flat earth society. Corporate industry makes mugs of local, national and european politicians, all of whom can't wait to claim the credit for 'creating jobs' when they dish out the subsidies. None of them will ever learn because none of them understand business. Goodbye Vestas and good riddance.
Andrew who.
All 7000 turbines that the Government committed to installing in the next 10yr will be manufactured overseas, as for the ridiculous statement "Supporters of large scale wind turbines are as ludicrous as the flat earth society." where do you think that the electricity is going to come from when we run out of oil? if we don't invest in renewables now we will pay for in the 30 yrs.
You are right, but in strictly energy terms, which means leaving the huge impact on employment out of it, it doesn't matter if turbines are manufactured overseas so long as they're manufactured somewhere. At least, it doesn't matter provided we have a balanced supply of energy generation sources, including nuclear power. Without that, and I'm well aware of the implications, we have no hope of sustaining western economies at the same time as the developing world seeks more energy to support its population and industrial development. I should dearly like to believe there was an alternative, but don't see what it is. It would be all very well to say the developed nations should stand still or even retrench (although in reality capitalism can't allow that, because it would collapse) but the global demand for fuel (and clean water) is going to be such that renewables alone can't even begin to meet the demand. Left and right need to get over the squabbles about onshire wind turbines, and address the need for an integrated range of solutions.
Thanks Robert but why build them overseas when we can build them here, helping the economy at the same time as helping the environment. we need 7000 wind vanes in the next 10 years why buy them from Denmark, China or Germany?
I can't give you a good reason for that, in any logical terms, but then I've never believed the capitalist system operates in terms of the usual human logic; it's all about the bottom line, ie profit. In this case, Vestas owns the plant and will situate it where it makes most money for them. And I suppose that IS logical, in strictly limited terms; but I agree with you, it makes less than no sense for the economy of Britain as a whole. That's the last thing on their minds, though!
The fact is that government is disinvesting from public provision, in housing, health, and education; it just isn't going to embark upon nationalization of individual companies unless, as with the banks, the economy can't function without them.
I'm an old-fashioned socialist; I never have supported this system. It doesn't even work in national interests anymore, thanks to the globalization of capital - so don't expect it to protect, or even care about, employment prospects on the island or in the UK as a whole: because it won't.
That kind of attitude breeds rank defeatism. The logic of capitalism is the maximization of profit, therefore we cannot ameliorate the worst effects of that system, to improve people's lives, until we have completely transformed society. Things will only change when everything has changed? We would have no health service, no welfare state or public education, not to mention workers' and democratic rights, if we simply dismissed the ability of working people to resist the drive towards unlimited accumulation in the here and now, in everyday struggles.
The Vestas workers are fighting against that 'logic'. Their demand for the nationalization of the plant makes sense, even if it does assume the capability of national governments to defy globalization. But in their occupation of the plant and the support we can offer them, people are showing the alternative to capitalism. Every great journey begins with a single step, and if you wait to jump on the bus right before we reach our final destination, it will never happen.
And your kind of attitude breeds an assumption that all the effort that people are now making to "save Vestas jobs" will lead to one job being saved, when you know, and I know, and in their heart of hearts they know, that it won't.
I'm sorry, this kind of self-delusion might appeal to you but it just exhausts people and ultimately wears them down. The only ones who derive temporary benefit from this kind of gung-ho rhetoric are the self-proclaimed revolutionary sects that seek to recruit "the workers" when it suits them, and for their own purposes. I do not imply that you're one of those, by the way. Altough it wouldn't surprise me if you were. Hard to tell as you prefer to be anonymous.
You make me angry: you quite obviously know that this has sod all to do with "ameliorating" the "worst effects" of capitalism. We have a welfare state, insofar as it promotes anyone's welfare, and a health service, and public education because it suited the economic system and the state as much as it benefited the people that they should be introduced. The ownership of a private company has absolutely nothing to do with that; it's dishonest to pretend otherwise. It's right that the Vestas workers make a protest, and I hope the publicity from it hurts the company as it deserves to be hurt. But you go into this sort of thing with your eyes open, not clouded with a rosy-red vision replete with this starry-eyed, starey-brained drivel proclaiming "people are showing the alternative to capitalism". By occuping one factory? On the Isle of Wight? Oh roll on the revolution! If there's a single genuine worker in Vestas who doesn't recognize this stuff as the tired-out old claptrap that it is, I shall be surprised.
Whilst it is looking increasingly unlikely that Vestas will stay or that there is anything that the Government will or can do the next best thing would be for the Vestas workers that have lost their jobs is to be given a decent redunduncy package. What Vestas have offered them is pathetic and insulting. If the outcome of this protest is that they get a more meaningful redundancy package then it would all have been extremely worthwhile.
How many of you have talked to a Vestas worker? Heard their stories of appalling health and safety, the divide and conqueror tactics that the management have used and the way that they have bullied the workers over the years. These people deserve a decent redundancy it is the least that Vestas owe them.
I entirely agree with you, and have returned to this subject in response to Geoff's latest blog from the front. We have some of the weakest worker-protection laws in Europe, after how many years of a Labour government? This is what you get with unfettered capitalism, or "private enterprise" if anyone prefers that term, and it simply amazes me that with all the years of experience we have of the way that it works, we still allow private companies to get away with practices like these.
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