Ford Visteon Workers Support Group

Ford Visteon Workers Support Group
Info: www.visteonoccupation.org
To get actively involved: visteon_support@haringey.org.uk
Contact: email address being set up
Updates: announcements e-list being set up


Next Support Group meeting
Wednesday 22nd April, 7.30pm
At the Visteon Factory, Enfield (Gate 5), Morson Rd (Gate 5), EN3 4NQ
The plant is 5mins walk from Ponders End train station, eastwards across the footbridge, southwards down the main road and turn left into Morson Rd
Note: If weather is very bad those present will transfer to nearby indoor venue

Coming Events

24/7: Picketing of all 4 entrances to the Visteon factory. Supporters welcome.
Sat 18 April, 11am: Supporters Gathering/Rally @ Visteon (Gate 5), Enfield
Wed 22 April, 7.30pm: Weekly Support Group meeting @ Visteon (Gate 5). All welcome.
Sat 25 April all day: National Day of Action and leafletting at Ford dealerships/showrooms
Sat 25 April, 11am: Supporters Gathering/Rally @ Visteon (Gate 5), Enfield + leafleting at showrooms afterwards
Sat 25 April, 5pm: Premiere of Visteon documentary @ Housmans, 5 Caledonian Rd, N1
Sun 26 April, 6:30pm: Visteon documentary @ The Foundry, Old St

Visteon workers leave factory but continue the fight

Having posted a bit on the Visteon factory workers situation, I can update folks a little....though I have not been involved since they left the factory. This is a statement from the Visteon folks themselves, along with a video posted on Youtube of the day.

Ford Visteon Occupation Enfield ends - 24 Hour Picket begins April 9 2009‏.

Statement from Enfield Ford Visteon workers

At a hearing at the High Court on Monday 6th April, the union Unite won the right for the Enfield occupation to continue without further legal duress until noon on Thursday 9th April so that negations with Visteon US could take place. (Two local trade union representatives had by then already been served with restraining orders threatening them with prison sentences.)

Kevin Nolan, the Enfield Unite convener, flew with Derek Simpson and Roger Maddison, to New York on Tuesday and held promising talks with the senior management, which will be resumed on Tuesday 13th somewhere in the UK.

After Kevin Nolan reported back, the workforce accepted Unites advice to cease the occupation by the legal deadline. The enthusiastic demonstration of several hundred people who had gathered to express support for their cause clapped, chanted and cheered the occupiers for the stand they had taken.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAhJICyrl-k


They are now picketing the factory to keep the pressure on Ford Visteon, and prevent them from removing equipment or products, and if necessary prevent Ford Visteon from re-opening the factory with a scab labour work force.


Messages of support can be sent to visteonoccupation@gmail.com

A Ford Visteon workers’ support group is helping to coordinate support by sustaining the pickets and publicising the Ford Visteon workers’ struggle for justice. By agreement with the pickets, Haringey Solidarity Group will channel financial support to the pickets through their bank account. Cheques made out to ‘Haringey Solidarity Group’ or ‘HSG’ may be sent to HSG, PO Box 2474, London N8 0HW (write Ford Visteon on the back).

Haringey Solidarity Group website : http://www.haringey.org.uk

Visteon Occupation - A fight for justice - Interviews with Enfield workers April 4 2009

Click the link to see a Youtube video of interviews with workers in the occupied Visteon factory in Enfield



Join the Visteon Occupation Facebook Group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid...


Workers at Visteon car component plants in Enfield (North London) and Belfast are occupying their factories. The workers, some of whom have worked at the plants for 40 years, were told their jobs were finished and given 20 minutes to clear their lockers. But they are refusing to be bullied, and are standing up for their rights.
The majority of the workforce are ex-Ford workers, producing products for Ford, and on contracts that were supposed to mirror Ford contracts. That means Ford should step in to offer decent redundancy, workers say.
Every worker should get behind the Visteon workers fight for justice.

Send a message of support now from yourself and any official union body to visteonoccupation@googlemail.com

Support Fords Visteon occupiers at the High Court Monday 6th April 2009

Monday 9.30am at the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand. High Court injunction hearing at 10.30am.

WE will also need people at Enfield as a possibility of people turning up to take away equipment in factory. People will be needed to prevent this, but no idea of time at the moment.

Support the Ford Visteon Workers Occupation

Come to the factory anytime!
Especially around 12 noon

Morson Road EN3 4TN
near Ponders End train station, Enfield

The plant is 5min walk, cross the foot-bridge, walk down main road towards Central London, the next street to the left is Morson Road, the factory situated at the end

Statement (below) from some Ford Visteon workers and supporters (from inside the occupied factory)


We have occupied our factory Ford Visteon workers have occupied our factory since Wednesday 1st April. The previous day in a meeting lasting just 6 minutes we were told that the European company, with plants in Belfast, Basildon and Ponders End, Enfield, was going into administration and that we were to leave - without our wages being paid. Personal possessions could be collected the next day, but at 10 o'clock the factory was locked closed. Workers had already occupied the Belfast factory.
We demand what is due to us The 200 workers who are part of the Ford subsidiary want the same conditions they have always had via "mirror contracts" with the parent company. Up to now they don't know when they will get wages due, and their pensions are to be controlled by the government Pensions Protection Fund. This means a maximum of £9,000 payout, and much reduced conditions! Some of the women and men have 40 yrs service!

The whole situation has been created for news management - announce it during the G20 and it will get buried in the media. And this is largely what's happened. The move is to save Visteon USA money at our expense.

But unexpectedly Unite union members have taken determined action that bosses thought they had eliminated years ago.

The workers want their existing terms respected. Ford Visteon can't be allowed to avoid their responsibility. So far they have tried legal intimidation but have even managed to mess this up.

As well as proper redundancy payments, some are suggesting that the skills of the workers who can make anything in plastic, should be used to make increasingly needed parts for green products - bike and trailer parts, solar panels, turbines, etc. Government investment in this rather than throwing money at bankers could be profitable & save jobs in the long term.

All support welcome Ford Visteon workers have been pleased at the support received from other Ford plants as well, such as Southampton, who are blacking Visteon products. 100s attended our rally on Saturday..

Please come to the factory at any time (especially 12 noon) to show us your support. Get your Union branch or organisation to pass a resolution in support. Help raise money by doing workplace and community collections, and drop in...

Messages of support to those inside: visteonoccupation@googlemail.com

This is a fight we can win. We're off our knees and fighting fit!

Life...death...and that which lies inbetween....

I've been thinking on this lately....and decided to write this. Most of this was written in one long emotional session, hardly even worrying about typing errors or whether it made sense, so please forgive if it meanders a touch.


Sometime in the next month, a year ago today my brother David died. I don't know exactly when, as he was not discovered until sometime after his death. It hit me harder than just about anything else I have experienced, and it seemed so sad, so cruel that as we were finding each other again and getting to know each other after so many years apart, that he would be struck down.

My brother had been through a difficult life. Both of us as children shared a childhood of uncertainty, violence and fear which only changed when my mother met Richard who she married. He brought some semblance of stability and discipline to our lives. My brother was not as lucky as me, and he had been so damaged that he could not relate to the outside world in anything but - for the most part - extremities of fear and love. I had not been affected by the pain we went through as he had, and he became estranged from the family, drifting off into bad situation after bad situation. During this time, he fathered a child but the relationship with the child's mother floundered and for many years he had to fight to gain access to his son. It was still a fight he had to deal with up to his last days.

I've had my own path, often of equal instability and trouble, but I was fortunate in how things turned out. I was so lucky to meet many people whose values were of true unconditional love, and a great joy in life. It is what I still try to be to this day, after some years of feeling lost and rootless, to trust myself and be true to how I feel. Not always easy in this world, and I have no illusions that I am anything more than trying, maybe occasionally succeeding.

I didn't see David for quite some time, years went past. But as I regained contact with David more recently, we had begun to embrace our new friendship. I was cautious but decided I should follow my gut instinct, and let him into my life again. There were times we had such a great laugh, just chatting on the phone, remembering things from when we were kids, and also our mutual outlook on life, which was beginning to mesh and grow stronger as a love for each other. We shared a fascination with computers and the internet and could rabbit on for ages. It was wonderful to see him so much more relaxed and at ease with himself, better than I had ever seen him.

My brother died in early April of last year. He was discovered some weeks later but it was not possible to ascertain what the cause was. I did not know any of this at the time. I had been calling him and calling him, only to find no response and his phones switched off. I was not in the best of health at the time, so traveling to see him was not really an option and I thought he would get in touch again soon, after having been through a bad patch of some kind or other. One day in April I was on vacation at home when I found out. It was a call from someone in the coroner's office in Greenwich, on August 14th, that gave me the news, and I only got the call because she had checked his mobile phone and found my number. I was devastated, and still I find it hard to think of it even now without a lump in my throat and the threat of tears. I was lucky that Denise was with me, and she looked after me and gave me comfort as I tried to come to terms with it. I was allowed to take some compassionate leave by my manager, who when I told her on the phone said with a gasp 'That's two of them'. She had been there when I had got the news of my brother Richards death a couple of years before, as well as my mothers passing before that. Dorothy was more than a manager, and is a friend which I bless my luck in having.

The funeral was later that month, but I was unable to attend as my health was such that I couldn't travel on public transport without great pain. I let my youngest brother Steven know, as I didn't want him to get a call out of the blue with the news as I had and he attended, with our nephew who he had taken under his wing, when my other brother Richard was murdered a few years before.

I knew of my brothers internet name which was Vipaar. He had been creating his own website, all self taught with real coding, not just a touch of HTML. I was finding that sometimes, although I work in computers, he knew as much as I did, and surpassed me too, on occasions. A internet search now finds the handful of posts he had published in a few online forums and I managed to find a few photos of him as well.

In the last few weeks on facebook, I have come to make contact again with many people I knew in the past. There are photos of people, who have aged and grown. On occasion there has been the question asked 'do you remember so and so? I heard he died'. There are folks like Dino, who I did know had gone, and others like Pete the drummer, who I didn't know about.

I have coined a phrase recently 'Its been a dozen lifetimes since...' which seems very true. I have been through so many changes since I first left home. and it has almost been as if I was finding a new family, before moving on, or sometimes being on my own for long periods with almost no contact with others. I've had my time of madness, of depression and stupidity, of too much drinking or other things waiting for some oblivion to take me away for the night or a day.

I have a feeling of having come full circle, in an odd way. Perhaps its encountering old friends, or arriving at some accommodation with who I am, and how I feel about life. I just know that I am glad to be where I am now, sad at those who are no longer here, death seems a bit more real to me now. I just felt I wanted to write this down, to mark those that have passed on, particularly my brother who I miss terribly, and think of nearly every day.

That's all I have to say.

Love

Michael

Intermission....

...its been a while...and till I get my thoughts together as its been a long night ...here's some of the people whose words and music have fought for my attention and won over the years...



'The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to
continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too
expensive to maintain they will just take down the scenery, they will pull
back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way,
and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre.'

Frank Zappa, quoted by Jim Ladd, 'Zappa on Air', Nuggets, No. 7, April/May 1977, p.17


"With audiences nowadays I see it with these late-night [TV show] people,
Jay Leno, David Letterman and so on the audience applauds the jokes rather
than laughs at them, which is very discouraging.

Laughter is involuntary. If it's funny you laugh. But you can easily clap
just to say [deadpan]: 'A ha, that's funny, I think that's funny.'
Sometimes they cut to the audience and you can see they are applauding
madly. But they're not laughing."

Tom Lehrer, "Stop clapping, this is serious" March 1 2003


"In a way I’m fortunate. All outsiders of any kind do have this fact that
they bring to bear on every situation all they have, instead of merely
taking it or leaving it, not really considering it very deeply. Every
person you meet is a potential antagonist, and you spend your time making
them over, working away at them, winning them over. Your life is one,
long, tentative flirtation with the world."

Quentin Crisp, 1978 KPFK-FM radio interview



"...those wonderful Berlin cabarets which did so much to stop the rise of
Hitler and prevent the outbreak of the Second World War..."

Peter Cook on the model for his comedy club the Establishment, via Tom
Lehrer speaking on the value of satire


"Now they sing out his praises on every distant shore
But so few remember what he was fightin' for
Oh why sing the songs and forget about the aim?
He wrote them for a reason, why not sing them for the same? "

Phil Ochs about Woody Guthrie "Bound For Glory" from All the News That's
Fit to Sing (1964)


"We are but the atoms in the incessant human struggle towards the light
that shines in the darkness--the Ideal of economic, political and
spiritual liberation of mankind!"

Emma Goldman's closing remarks in her address to the jury in U.S. v. Emma
Goldman and Alexander Berkman (July 9,1917)


"Now 60, County still takes great delight in wrecking the straights and
the conservative contingent of the gay community. "Walking down the street
with a friend and waiting for the people who are walking towards me to
just get up to where I am and suddenly, throwing my arms up in space and
screaming 'Oh honey, his dick was sooo big, all I could do with it was
throw it over my shoulder and burp it!' That is a good one," she laughs."

Complete and Utter County, First published in SX News, 24 August, 2006


"Now there are seven kinds of Coke
500 kinds of cigarettes
This freedom of choice in the USA drives everybody crazy
But in Acapulco
Well they don't give a damn
About kids selling Chiclets with no shoes on their feet
See how we are
"Hey man, Whats in it for me?"
See how we are
We only sing about it once in every twenty years
See how we are
Oh see how we are"

X, See how we are, (Exene Cervenka and John Doe)



"Oh like a bird on the wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free."

from Bird on the Wire, Leonard Cohen


"...The jukebox wailed. He believed he understood the longing of the
cheap tunes better than anyone there. The Wurlitzer was a great beast,
blinking in pain. It was everybody's neon wound. A suffering
ventriloquist. It was the kind of pet people wanted. An eternal bear for
baiting, with electric blood. Breavman had a quarter to spare. It was
fat, it loved its chains, it gobbled and was ready to fester all night..."

The Favourite Game, Leonard Cohen


"I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I
go into another room and read a good book. " Groucho Marx


"The retreat from a hippie, illogical revolution to solid Marxist Leninist
good sense is possibly another symptom that social change toward a free
human environment on this planet is losing ground."

Mick Farren, Why bother? International Times, February 1972


"have I doubt when I'm alone
love is a ring, the telephone
love is an angel disguised as lust
here in our bed until the morning comes
come on now try and understand
the way I feel under your command
take my hand as the sun descends
they can't touch you now,
can't touch you now, can't touch you now
because the night belongs to lovers ... "

From "Because the night" Patti Smith



"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to
replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It
dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of
tarnishing." Anais Nin


"If I want to take a picture, I take it no matter what" Nan Goldin


"Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" Johnny Rotten, San Fransisco,
last Sex Pistols gig, 1978


"Their sentimental calling signs
Are calculatingly designed
To rob you of your mind and time
And still you listen to
The lulling drone of reassuring voices
Tunes to take away your choices
Make you slaves to fancy words and phrases
Until you're pushing up the daisies
They steal away your freedom
and your love"

Hawkwind, Coded languages from Sonic Attack, 1981



"Senatorial status means little to the Queen of Pop. I have disrupted the
whole Jimmy & the Boys recording and gigging schedule to make sure my name
is on the ballot, and so that NSW has a real choice between madness and
sanity in the Senate." Joylene Thornbird Hairmouth, Jimmy & the Boys
keyboardist.

Joylene Hairmouth ran for house of representatives in the senate and got
over 4300 votes in the end, New South Wales 1980.


"OK, sweaty snugglebunnies" Opus, Bloom County.

(if you're viewing this in Facebook, click "View original post" to see the rest.... :D