Workers occupy car parts factories in England and Northern Ireland

[dcsmart]

Hundreds of workers at car parts maker Visteon have launched occupations and sit-in protests at three of the company's sites. Up to 200 workers are occupying the Finaghy plant in west Belfast, 130 are on the roof and around the premises in Enfield, North London, while protests are ongoing at Basildon, Essex.

The occupations follow the summary decision on Tuesday by the company's UK arm, formerly part of car giant Ford, to place itself in administration and sack 565 of its 610 workforce.

Workers, many with three decades of service, were given just moments to collect their belongings and leave. Summing up their experiences, a placard at the Basildon protest complained "20 Years Work, Zero Minutes Notice."

Protests began in the Belfast plant, where 210 workers have been sacked. One hundred workers occupied the plant on Tuesday night, demanding either that the plants are kept operational or the redundancy and pension pay-outs are the same as their entitlement would have been if Visteon UK, spun off in 2000, had remained part of Ford.

John McGowan told the Belfast Telegraph, "Last year they were offering redundancy packages of £30,000 minimum. Now they're telling me for my 30 years loyalty to this company I'm getting a redundancy package which is capped at just over £9,000. That's totally unjust and unfair."
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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/apr2009/occu-a04.shtml