Accounts of Sitdown Strikes and Workplace Occupations in the UK and Around the World
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OH SIT DOWN! Accounts of sitdown strikes and workplace occupations in the UK and around the world Compiled by libcom.org - a resource for discontented workers Table of contents 2001: Brighton bin men's strike and occupation............................. 3 2000: Cellatex chemical plant occupation, France ....................... 10 2007: Migrant workers' occupation wins, France.......................... 14 2004: Strike and occupation of IT workers at Schneider Electrics, France .......................................................................................... 15 2008: 23 day long occupation of major power-plant in northern Greece ends in police repression................................................. 18 1992-4: The incomplete story of the University College Hospital strikes and occupations................................................................ 20 1972: Under new management - Fisher-Bendix occupation ........ 62 2003: Zanon factory occupation - interview with workers, Argentina ..................................................................................................... 72 Editors’ notes This booklet was compiled very rapidly* 2008 following a series of workplace occupations which workers have launched in response to redundancies. As employers use the financial crisis to make layoffs, attacked pensions, pay, and working conditions, an increasing number of workers are beginning to resist. As we go to press, hundreds of workers sacked with no notice or redundancy pay are occupying Visteon car part plants in London and Belfast to demand treatment in line with their contracts with Ford. Workers at the Prisme plant in Dundee have been occupying their workplace for weeks, demanding redundancy pay. This booklet reproduces accounts and analysis, some very short, some very detailed, of some workplace occupations by other groups of workers in the UK and elsewhere over the past 40 years. We hope that the experiences and lessons gained by workers in the past can be a small contribution to help inform and inspire our fellow workers today. libcom.org is an online organising resource and archive of news and information on workers struggles * So please forgive any errors! 2 2001: Brighton bin men's strike and occupation A short history of a victorious strike and occupation of their workplace by contracted-out bin workers that was assisted by local residents. Refusing Collection In the week between the 11th and the 15th of June, 2001 a workers' struggle of a kind not experienced in the UK for a long time took place in the refuse collection depot in Brighton. In defiance of the dominant spectacle of social peace, the bin men of Brighton took collective action after being sacked for refusing newly imposed work routines. Quickly, their struggle took the character of a complete refusal to continue working under the same management, passively embracing a large part of the community of Brighton. On Monday the 11th of June, SITA, the French company which was contracted by the Brighton and Hove Council to run street cleaning and refuse collection imposed new working routines, ones which were completely impossible to achieve, such as cleaning a 17 mile stretch in eight hours with a broom. On hearing these new measures, twelve workers refused to carry them out and were immediately suspended. When this happened, the twelve called in their fellow workers who had already left the depot and explained the situation. In response, they all returned and blockaded the entrances of the depot, refusing the management's action and demanding their immediate re-instatement. SITA management responded by sacking them all. As a consequence, and in an act which has not happened in Brighton for at least 20 years, the workers occupied their workplace and demanded: * the immediate re-instatement of all workers (full-time and agency), * the termination of the contract with SITA. A day later the following demand was added to the list: * the formation of a workers' co-operative to take control of street cleaning and refuse collection The Council responded by giving SITA 48 hours to prove that they are capable of carrying out the work that they were being paid to do. In its attempts to do this, and to break the workers' 'strike', SITA used local (private) employment agencies in order to 3 employ scabs. The jobs of the 240 suspended workers were advertised in the local papers (not only in Brighton, but also in surrounding areas like Worthing and Crawley). A few of us (direct action anarchists and communists) joined the struggle as soon as we found out it was going on, and participated with workers in the various actions that were deemed necessary. The first was to go with some workers at the other depot from which the scabs were leaving and to stop their trucks from coming out. This was hugely successful: one of us locked himself underneath the first scab truck at the entrance of the depot, effectively stopping any other truck from leaving, while the workers who were there persuaded the majority of the temps not to scab by either explaining to them the situation, or by threatening them that their union would make sure that they would not be able to find another job in Brighton. When the fire brigade was called in to de-lock our comrade, the shop steward from the depot explained the situation and in an inspiring act of solidarity the firemen refused to participate, leaving as quickly as they had come. Most temps who had turned up refused to work after realising that they would be scabs (the job was not advertised in exactly those terms), while SITA and agency managers who had also turned up to supervise the situation were seriously fucked off with the development. Only a truck that arrived later could be used, with a crew of three people, to do a job which usually required more than 30 trucks, each with five people as crew. The second action that we took concerned the agencies that were employing scabs in Brighton. In collaboration with the union and after their request, we wrote a leaflet warning workers that taking up the job made them scabs, and handed them outside the agencies. The management of the agencies freaked out and tried to stop us by calling in the police. The fact was however that there was nothing that the police could do apart from giving us abstract threats. After the agency management realised there was nothing they could do, the promised that they would not recruit any more scabs. The same thing happened at another agency that SITA employed which was outside Brighton, in the neighbouring town of Worthing. After we leafleted the workers there, the agency also promised to stop employing scabs. The fact that we managed in collaboration with the workers to stop the scabs gave even more strength to the workers' struggle, since SITA was unable to comply with the Council deadline. Negotiations between the workers, the Council and the company would have definitely been very different had we not succeeded in stopping the scabs. Since the beginning of the occupation, SITA had refused any negotiations with the workers, while the agency preferred using outright threats to break up the struggle. However, after the actions that the workers took and the extent of public support, the Council mediated between the two and a further meeting was agreed. In that, the final agreement was made: SITA lost the contract and would leave the management of the refuse collection in September; all sacked workers would be re-instated and fully paid for the week spent in occupation; the working routines would return to the way they were before the 11th of June; all further dismissals have to be negotiated with GMB, and a council representative would supervise any further changes in the organisation of work. 4 History Similarly, the street cleaners represent another bastion of working class resistance, with a long tradition of militancy [1]. Many of the work practices date from the days before the privatisation of street cleaning (which was around 10 years ago!), a situation that SITA had been trying to defeat for a long time--without particular success. There was speculation going around that SITA had provoked the situation (without however anticipating such a reaction) in an attempt to get rid of the 'bad old days' practices of the workers. Knowing that it would only be able to exert more profit by re- organising the work conditions, the argument goes, SITA staged the initial suspension, knowing that the rest of the workforce would react. By sacking them all, SITA was hoping to re-employ them on individual contracts that came with the new work routines and with effective decreases on their wages and, more importantly, breaking down their strength and solidarity. Their gamble however was unsuccessful: the workers remained united. By taking this unlawful action, the workers forced management into a defensive position. The mediations that an official strike imposes were largely absent. Conditions of nearly full employment also placed the workers’ struggle in a better position. It explains for example why the private agencies were quickly forced to abandon the employment of scabs, or the fact that many of the 'scabs' that turned up in the second depot were easily persuaded not to cross the picket lines, since finding another job was easier than it used to be. The struggle immediately received the support of most of Brighton's residents, who had felt the effects of the privatisation of refuse collection and the deterioration of the service as a result of SITA taking over which had made refuse collection sporadic and ineffective. Although the streets were piling up with rubbish, we did not in the duration of the struggle come across a single person who blamed the situation on the workers. Their struggle was socialised and thus gained more strength. Similar to the struggles in the railways, where the deterioration of safety (to name but one) was a direct consequence of privatisation, but more dynamic in its practices, the struggle of the bin men shattered social indifference and embraced Brighton's community, though mostly in a passive way.