Rolls-Royce jet engine workers strike to defend their jobs
https://themilitant.com/2020/12/19/rolls-royce-jet-engine-workers-strike-to-defend-their-jobs/
BY ÓLÖF ANDRA PROPPÉ
AND HUGO WILS
Vol. 84/No. 51
December 28, 2020
BARNOLDSWICK, England — “They have given us no choice but to fight,”
Dennis Constable said Dec. 5 at the end of a rally and car caravan
organized by Rolls-Royce jet engine workers and their union, Unite, in
support of their strike here to stop job cuts. Constable is a shop floor
worker at the factory here and Unite branch secretary.
People came from across Northwest England. Hundreds gathered in the
parking lot of a shopping center to join the action. The cars went
through the towns of Burnley, Nelson and Colne, ending with a rally near
the factory.
The strike began Nov. 6 with a section of the workforce the union
considered key for production. The company then placed the remaining
workers on a furlough. Rolls-Royce has announced the layoff of 140
workers, in addition to cutting 350 jobs, which triggered the strike action.
Mark Porter, the Unite union convener at the factory, told the Militant
that strikers had received a number of messages of solidarity, including
from IG Metall union in Germany and unions in Australia and the U.S.
“This is my first time visiting a picket line,” Jake Wyatt, a rail
worker and member of the RMT trade union, told strikers. He came with
some co-workers. “It’s good to see workers take a stand like this, to
see what the union can do.”
Garry Gallagher, an ambulance support worker in Wigan who has visited
the picket line a number of times, pointed out how important it is to
let the striking workers “know there are people out there that do
support their struggle, that their fight is for all of us and for our
future.”
Some 314,000 people in the country lost their jobs from July to
September. A government scheme to pay 80% of furloughed workers’ wages
has been extended through March 2021, partly masking the scope of the
crisis.
“We say to the community: Today this is our struggle, tomorrow it’s
yours,” Porter said.
Messages of solidarity can be sent to ross.quinn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.
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workers who are, please contact me at (212) 244-4899 or
themilitant@xxxxxxx. We’ll work together to ensure your story gets
told. —Roy Landersen
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Carl Sagan “Why do we put up with it? Do we like to be criticized? No,
no scientist enjoys it. Every scientist feels a proprietary affection
for his or her ideas and findings. Even so, you don’t reply to critics,
Wait a minute; this is a really good idea; I’m very fond of it; it’s
done you no harm; please leave it alone. Instead, the hard but just rule
is that if the ideas don’t work, you must throw them away.” ― Carl
Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
