Edinburgh Anarchists

The 6 worst bosses of all time…

However, Bryant and May couldn’t help but notice the other match companies were still making more money. What were they doing wrong? Clearly they weren’t abusing their employees enough… was there some kind of torture device they could be using? Maybe if they just let wild badgers run loose on the production floor?

They had a better idea. They had been making their matches with the extremely flammable but otherwise safe red phosphorous. But there was this other kind, white phosphorous, that was way cheaper. And there was absolutely no downside.

Oh, except it would literally eat your face off when you handled it.

At risk of being lost in the G20 meltdown London protest flood comes the news that workers in Enfield and Northern Ireland have decided to occupy their factories in response to getting fucked over by Ford.

Yesterday workers at the 3 factories owned by Ford Cars subsidiary Visteon in Basildon, Enfield and Belfast were called into the offices by management at 2pm and laid-off with immediate effect. They were not even given time to collect their belongings or provided with any redundancy pay (other than an initial week’s wages that had been held back from them in the first place.

Visteon is a tax dodge that was set up by Ford in 2000. It has been variously used as a way by Ford for not providing normal legal provisions for workers. Recently, it was delisted from the New York Stock Exchange after shares dropped from 7c to 2c.

the workers demands are:

• Full back pay
• Full legal notice in compliance with UK law
• The same conditions of redundancy that Ford workers receive

…is kind of difficult. I don’t know anyone involved and don’t know people who know people who are involved. The media is painting it as purely “anti foreign worker” but 200 Poles joined a walkout in Plymouth.
And then the BBC pulls this nakedly propagandistic stunt. Watch this 30-second video if you think that its reporting is fair and impartial.

“Quotes from News At Ten and Newsnight (half an hour later), Feb 2 2009. The striker’s quote is edited in the News At Ten segment to make it appear as if he does not want to work alongside foreigners – to justify an editorial claim that the strike is xenophobic. In the fuller Newsnight report, it is clear that he is saying that he _cannot_ work alongside them, because they are segregated.”