Masthead
One of my photos
← →

Another good reason to be in your union

July 14th, 2011 · Posted by Skuds in Politics · No Comments · Politics

Businesses around here are taking a bit of a beating already, especially the pharmaceutical industry, with SKB in Crawley and Novertis in Horsham both closing sites.   A lot of the workers are going to find it hard to find jobs in the same industry without looking well outside the immediate area.   The Novartis staff have another problem on top of all that: the redundancy packages they will be getting are a lot less than those workers in other locations are getting from the same employer.
Novartis are also making staff redundant in Liverpool and the packages there are worth about twice what the Horsham staff are getting.  The difference between the two sites?  The Liverpool site was unionised. (See this story in the County Times)

I see the same thing where I work.  My part of the company has a union presence and the terms we negotiated for redundancy are a lot better than those in other parts of the company.  Of course the union hopes that the cost of redundancy will ensure the company don’t resort to it lightly and see it as a last resort, but if the worse happens we have better protection.

I do hope the Novartis staff are successful in finding new jobs, but when they do will they be more inclined to participate in union membership? It would be nice to think so.

Tags:

No Comments so far ↓

There are no comments yet... Kick things off by filling out the form below.

Leave a Comment

*
To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture. Click on the picture to hear an audio file of the word.
Click to hear an audio file of the anti-spam word

 

 
Comments Policy:

  • Comments from anyone who is unknown (ie who has not commented before) will go into a moderation queue to be approved. This is to prevent spam/advertising comments and there may be a delay before such comments appear.
  • As far as possible I will not reject moderated comments or delete published comments, even if I disagree with them or if they are criticising me.
  • I intend only to delete/reject comments which are offensive, racist, homophobic, sexist or similar or if they are in any way illegal/libellous.
  • If you think a comment meets those criteria and I might have missed it, let me know.
  • Although technically I am able to edit comments I will not do so unless it is to remove embedded code which is causing problems.
  • If it is ever necessary to edit a comment it will be made clear that it has been edited.
  • Certain words in comments will cause the whole comment to be automatically consigned to the dustbin (Aavaisha, hmmegatest, cognitive, phentermine, xanax, pharmacy, viagra, vicodin, casino, ultram, tamiflu, valium, tramadol, levitra, carisoprodol) for obvious reasons.