Class Struggles in Enfield

Originally printed in Freedom 7010

Freedom interviews one of the workers active in the occupation and picket of the Visteon factory in Enfield.

Workers at the car parts manufacturing plants in Enfield, Basildon and Belfast won a seven week battle against Visteon UK, (and their former employer's Ford), after they were sacked without notice when the company went bust. In what was a monumental victory against car giants Ford, whom the workers were still contracted to, they are now receiving a proper redundancy package. We talk to Vijay, one of those active in the campaign over the past two months.

If we can start by asking about you?
I been there for 20 years, I started work May 1989, at that time it was still a Ford factory. I used to do quality inspection of the fuel and temperature gauges, it was all mechanical then, so we had a big department for speedometers, one department making turbometers, and one department we just made fuel and temp gauges. A that time here was nearly 1200 people employed on the shopfloor. By the time we closed it was 190 or so.

You were employed by Ford originally?
It was completely Ford; everybody had Ford contracts when it moved to Visteon in 2000. There was a big ceremony at the factory for the change over, they linked up all the plants, we said at the time we don't want to be a Visteon company, but slowly things changed and we became Visteon. Both the union and management told us we've have the same terms and conditions, but we were still not happy about becoming Visteon, as a workforce we wanted to stay as Ford.
We started making parts for Jaguar, Honda, Land Rover, Toyota, but we always considered we were Ford workers working at a Visteon factory because we were covered by Ford terms and conditions. They actually said we would be covered for life.

Vijay shows me the original document signed between the company and the unions guaranteeing Visteon workers they same conditions as Ford.

Visteon had committed to mirror the terms and conditions of Ford, most of us knew this place wasn't going to be there for much longer because the way they were moving the products away, but we were expected to be given a job elsewhere or at least a decent redundancy. Over the last few years there was a lot of voluntary redundancies, last October I could've actually taken voluntary redundancy but we thought we had production till 2012 on the things we were making now, so we thought they would get rid of people slowly and everyone would get a chance to go, with money, it actually says in the document signed by Ford and Visteon and the unions 'we will give a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies'.

What happened when the administrators came in?
I got a phone call from a friend about 2.30pm saying the company's gone into administration, people were shocked and nobody knew what to do, everybody just shook hands with each other and started leaving, there was only four or five people getting their stuff, there was a few management people inside, I was disappointed everyone had gone, we should have done something. When everybody left the plant nobody was given any information about money or anything they said we'd receive a letter through the post, we received a booklet how to claim from the National Insurance fund, nothing from the company, not a single penny. They didn't even pay us for the last week and two days, we actually lost seven days money.

So when did you occupy the factory?
Some people went down to the pub and Kevin [Nolan, Unite convenor] had a call from Belfast that they are occupying the place so it was planned that we would occupy the building. People were told to come tomorrow morning at 10am, by the time I got there at 10.30 there was about 30-40 people outside, there people was already 70-80 inside the plant. Kevin and Piers [Hood, Unite deputy convenor] went to court and were banned from re-entering the building. The previous day we had a meeting inside and we were told by the union the company were charging Kevin and Piers with assault on one of the security men and other charges.

The union solicitors made an agreement with the company solicitors to drop all the charges and we would come out on Thursday, otherwise Kevin and Piers would go to jail, that was the explanation they gave to us. We had a meeting to decide if we should stay, we had a few arguments, some people were angry about this, they didn't want to leave, but the majority said alright because they didn't want to get a criminal record if they stayed inside, so we decided to leave. When you look at people like us we've been working there 20-30 years, we were scared; we didn't what to get involved in criminal things.

That's understandable, but occupying a building is a civil offence not a criminal offence.

We did hear these stories, I think our biggest problem was that they didn't give us the right advice, we didn't try to find the right advice, the union gave us this advice and we decided to leave. Wednesday night we had a meeting inside the plant we decided to leave then start picketing the plant.

We wanted to carry on fighting, nobody thought this was the end, most were disappointed to leave because obviously it's a stronger fight if you are inside, Thursday midday we came out to a big gathering, a lot of people there and set up pickets at the four gates. In the beginning it was four gates but we blocked one of the main shutters, we put a lot of stuff there, so we covered three gates to stop people coming in. A few people were still employed at Visteon Enfield. On the day the company went in administration they had already asked 17 people to stay on, but after we started they didn't cross the picket line.

Tell me about the picket?
I was there every day on the picket line. Out of the 46 days I only missed 2 days. The atmosphere on the picket was very good. It was a kind of family kind of thing, when we were working inside you knew a lot of people just to say hello, didn't really talk to you, but when we were sitting outside be become friends, like you've been friends for years. It changed everything completely, it brought everyone together.

Can you tell me about the role of Unite?
A lot of people were unhappy with the unions. When we were inside the union officials told us because it was unofficial strike and occupation they can't support us so people were thinking once we were outside we'd see some big support from the union, but we didn't see anything, at picket level or anything. People were very disappointed. We're all members of Unite, it's a big union, it has a lot of money and resources, the feeling was on the picket line most people felt very badly let down by the union, almost everyone felt that.

What was the deal you eventually received?
The deal we have is with Visteon Corporation, the money's coming from them. But recently Ford is trying to bail out Visteon in the US, taking all their loans on; Ford has always helped Visteon Corporation financially. We were told Ford has 51% share of Visteon, so in a way Ford is still the owner. There are 3 separate payments - mirror employees, that's Ford employees, then there's Visteon new hire, those who joined after 2000, then CCR [cost competitive rate employees], people who been there 3 years or less.
Pensions were not part of the deal at all; there was no talk about pensions, which was the biggest loss. This is still an issue with people. We still want to carry on, but I don't know how effective it's going to be now. I wanted to carry the fight forward, create a pressure group, the unions said let's finish this, get the money, then we'll look into the pension side. It doesn't look right, but that's what happened, some of us were not happy about it at all. The unions said they will pursue it on our behalf, but a pressure group can make enquiries.

The main reason we got the deal we did was because we did occupied the building and because of the picket. The top union fellas would never have bothered to get involved if we hadn't have done any of these things, everyone would've gone home, end of story. But because people have done these things, because of the action, people have to come in and do something about it. We know now if sometimes something goes wrong and you want to achieve something you have to fight nowadays.