The Case of Manufacturing

1. The Case of Manufacturing Vulnerability, and Organising the ‘Once Organised’. Jean Jenkins Cardiff Business School and CGLR jenkinsj1@cardiff.ac.uk

2. Vulnerable Work • TUC CoVE Report: ‘vulnerable work is insecure, low paid and places workers at high risk of employment rights abuse’ (2008: 11) • This presentation examines a case of ‘displaced’ manufacturing workers made redundant from a factory which had defined generations of lives within one community – the Burberry factory at Treorchy, in the Rhondda Valleys. • It highlights how quickly workers may fall out of the category of ‘secure’, albeit low paid employment, into vulnerability, and raises issues in relation to union organising.

3. Local Context • Decline of coal mining and all forms of manufacturing characterises a locality where redundancy is no stranger. • Original factory was set up in 1937, Burberry took full ownership in the 1990s. • Generations had worked at the plant, mainly female but also men working in cutting, stores and maintenance. • Profitable plant. • High union density • ‘We never thought it would close …’

4. Relocation and Campaigning • September 2006: Burberry give 90 days notice of relocation to China. • High profile union campaign in alliance with local politicians – a community within and outside the plant. • Burberry employees mobilised around the ‘big idea’ that they were being disadvantaged by corporate greed • Celebrities; media attention; demonstrations outside the London store; international solidarity and demonstrations in Paris and Chicago; documentaries and a play; tea at the Ritz … • Outcomes: doubled redundancy payments; extended the life of the factory by 3 months; community fund … ‘we stood up to be counted …’

5. One year on … • Questionnaire issued to shop floor employees yielded 80 replies • 75% of respondents in paid work. • 59% of those respondents reported their earnings were now lower. • Factory earnings were around £208 per week. • 51% of those respondents were in ‘part-time’ work, with hours ranging from 6 – 30 per week. • The main areas of work were home-care and retail.

6. Women’s Work • Child care, low wages and domestic responsibilities limit the capacity for travelling for work. • Variable hours in retail and home-care. • Retail hours vary, but are generally capped at 16 per week. • Home care hours notified one week in advance – workers work ‘from home’. • In one example earnings can vary from £75 to £150 from one week to another. • Home care is a local authority service and this is not agency work.

7. Men’s Work • Building trades, and some better manufacturing opportunities outside the immediate locality, but reliant on ability to travel. • Local manufacturing – box manufacture and double glazing. • Double glazing factories regularly lay-off before holiday periods and in months when trade falls. • Difficult to build continuity of employment. • Constant insecurity for male and female wage earners in the household.

8. Unionisation • 75% of respondents who were in paid work were no longer members of a trade union. • These are workers who were mobilised to spectacular effect just twelve months earlier. • Once displaced from the community of the factory, and without a union structure around them, even these workers fall prey to the nature of vulnerable work. • Participation in a union campaign did not necessarily make them union activists or knowledgeable about their individual or collective rights. • There is a need to organise again the ‘once organised’.

9. Concluding points for consideration … • Vulnerable work is everywhere, and it is not only ‘rogue’ employers who are engaged in practices which cause hardship and isolate workers from one another. • Organising vulnerable workers and challenging their employers strains resources and has enormous difficulties, but • Campaigning unionism cannot succeed in strengthening the union movement if it is characterised by a series of isolated campaigns; workers need to see the ongoing importance of union membership in their daily working lives, and to feel they have greater power inside a union. • ‘Seeing’ the union via individual / collective grievance and disciplinary cases may be a potent organising tool.