The public gets the Associated Press story at the top. Behind the scenes is a chaotic situation (video below). Much stems from the fact that the unions at the BMW plant had apparently had as part of the labor contract “weeks notice” (or three weeks according to some reports) before a layoff. This was ignored and nothing was done about it. The soft and fuzzy news that the public gets is masking a growing resentment by a large portion of the public. Don’t be surprised when all hell breaks loose someplace or other. The only reason you’d be surprised, is because you are not getting good and detailed analysis. It’s just soft and bland. Pathetic actually.
Father-of-one Roger Freitis, 26, from Cowley, said: “It’s not just the job cuts, it’s how they did it which is disgraceful.
“An hour before the end of our shift they round us up and say we are going.
“No redundancy, nothing, just an hour’s notice.
“We’ve been here all weekend asking what is going to happen and they say nothing.
Then there is this:
The news coverage is bad because there are no real news agencies any more. Only the Obama PR machine driving the agenda.
Viva la Revolution!
I don’t blame them. One hours notice is disgraceful.
The local BBC news reported that these guys were on short term agency contracts that were paid a higher rate but only had one week’s notice. Although they only got told a hour before the end of their shift – they actually got paid their notice week without having to work it. Unsurprisingly unions are selectively reporting this.
It actually looks like they were not notified. If it’s in the contract to give one or two or three weeks notice then they are owed that. The workers should be mad and the union should have the absolute right to strike and remove all workers from the plant. In addition, all related industry workers should be able to strike in sympathy.
But as far as Obama PR machine having to do with this, uh troll, two different countries #1, #2 you’re really a nut if you even begin to believe that he’s controlling the news media at this point. It’s Bush’s friends that run lots of the media organization after all.
It’s obvious that we are just months away from seeing corporate criminals and their political allies hanging from light poles across the country. Just wait ’till the bottom REALLY falls out this summer.
And to think, these losers are foolish enough to think that Marshall Law will protect them from 300 million angry citizens…
LOL!
Some idiot said,
The local BBC news reported that these guys were on short term agency contracts that were paid a higher rate but only had one week’s notice. Although they only got told a hour before the end of their shift – they actually got paid their notice week without having to work it. Unsurprisingly unions are selectively reporting this.
Why do IDIOTS like you constantly defend corporations? What the FUCK have they done for us other then exploit us?
@7 Nice rationalisation – Doesn’t agree with me – must be an idiot.
I’m not defending anyone – if you want more money and are prepared to accept less security with a short notice period in return you sign the contract.. if not you don’t sign. According to the local news they did get the notice paid.
On the other hand selective reporting by UK unions who normally despise these ‘agency staff’ who they claim steal work from perm. staff is quite amusing.
# 7 Troublemaker said, “What the FUCK have they done for us other then exploit us?”
Have you ever worked for a “corp”? Did you get paid?
Oh heaven forbid anyone on this blog would ever work for an evil corporation.
What a load of horseshit. The company has a responsibility to this the correct way and they did.
If we laid someone off at my last job we told them in a room and marched them out. They got their severance pay and that was it. I guess we were lucky we didn’t have a bunch of cry babies working for us.
Hey, if they didn’t like getting laid off why didn’t they just go out on strike to cripple the company, oh wait, they were a little late…..
BMW received millions of pounds worth of incentives and subsidies from the British Government to go to Cowley. They would not have done this without first checking with London.
#7
It’s not defending it, IF they did give them the weeks pay they we’re supposed to they lived up to the terms.
The real question is should the execs be giving themselves bonus’s for failing the company require the cut back?
The moral of the story is you can’t trust the MSM. They are all owned buy giant media companies and they have a vested interest in sugar coating everything. It is very sad when the best reporting on TV is done by the Daily Show.
#8, Charlie, the worst thing you can possibly do is not agree with their leftist world view. It’s practically a crime against humanity.
The OP is in error. JCD you are conflating two related but separate stories:
1. Plant Closure
2. Union Reaction to the Plant Closing.
Why should either look like the other?
Simlarly:
1. Its Darwins Birthday Anniversary
2. Religious Nutballs with heads up their asses.
Again, related but different stories.
#10 No they didn’t.
So if an employee came in and said,I quit good luck and walked out on you, you’d be fine with that. Well, you might but most companies would expect the decency of a weeks notice.
the old union guy says “cannon fodder”, wtf is cannon fodder? hahaha! what century is this guy in?
#17–ratswill==
cannon fodder
Function:
noun
Date:
circa 1891
1 : soldiers regarded or treated as expendable in battle 2 : an expendable or exploitable person,
Whadzup dog? All snizzle no frazzle? Some mighty fine bad-ass frazzle out there. Word, dog.
[Quit listening to rap Bobbo!
– ed.]
I don’t see anything indicating the terms of contract for these people.
If these are higher paid employees for shorter terms (as someone stated), then they should get a notice of renewal of contract, if that didn’t happen, then there is no renewal. They are gone. That’s why they are paid more. That’s what contract work is all about.
If they get a notice of end of contract, the employer has an option of working or non-working notice. If it’s an unpopular layoff(which, almost all are), you don’t say :”Hey everyone, you loose your job a week from today.” Cause guess what? You’re going to have a lot of Mini’s running off the road and quality issues. You let them go instantly, not gently and from the uproar in the crowd, I’d say it was the best decision.
I have had to do this way too MANY times in my past… with IT Professionals. Either a contract is up, poor performance, departmental issues, outsourcing… every single time I walk them to the door and give them the money they are entitled to (or more). These are people I know and trust completely. They are welcome to come in and talk to people, come in and use equipment as they need, etc… but hands off any job related stuff.
I walk them to do the door not to protect the company, but to protect the person. You do not want to give the company or it’s employees a reason to question a person’s integrety when they are not there to protect themselves. I’ve seen way too many times someone say, maybe XYZ screwed it up before they left. Or maybe they stole data. Or maybe they talked to another employee about all this… The object is to remove any chance of questionable behavior from that point onward.
As well, letting them go instantly, with the proper pay, gives them the ability to jump full force into looking for new work. If they have to work, they get more depressed and delay moving on with their lives.
It’s not exactly true what you say, John, we saw both videos here, both in our local (portuguese) TV and on the BBC and Sky News. Kinda upset my stomach too.
And what the guy says that this would be illegal in other countries… well, the same sort of thing happened SEVERAL times in my country, in one case letting everyone work all day and then, ***30 minutes*** before the end of the work day, telling everyone the company would close right there and then. The TV reporters even found people crying outside!
As a friend of mine said, it’s just a case of basic human respect that’s lacking in today’s psychopathic management boards…
Sad
I loved the last link to Dame Stella Rimington and the quote “Dame Stella accused ministers of interfering with people’s privacy and playing straight into the hands of terrorists by “frightening people” in order to be able to pass new laws.”
It’s good to see these people FINALLY starting to wake up. But where was she when this was coming about? For this statement I shall dub her Dame Captain Obvious.
An hour sounds good to me at lest you can go collect your stuff. I got laid off from my job at McFarlane on monday Dec. 13th I got called into a room and away I went. I wasnt even aloud to go back to my desk and collect my things. I had to comeback at a latter time to get my stuff. This is typical here in the U.S.
#24 Nice timing, just before Christmas. I hope you found work.
Maybe the Germans demanded that BMW stop outsourcing. If outsourcing = evil then BMW has grown a conscience. We should applaud them. Right?
While it does suck for those workers, at least they got an hours notice. At the place where I worked during the 2000-2001 telecommunications crash they held a meeting 15 minutes after announcing it and told us they were going to start laying people off. We were then told to go back to our desk and they would let us know who was laid off. The security guard walked around with somebody from HR and stood behind you and watched you clean out your desk if you were laid off. Talk about a poor way to treat your people. I wouldn’t be surprised if they did something similar tomorrow when our quarterly meeting is being held.
Employer civility exited once the unions were co-opted and corrupted.
I had the unhappy task of working as a security guard at ITT Telecom in Raliegh, NC in the mid 1980’s. ITT came to the realization they were not going to be able to adapt their European digital network switch to the US market and had mass layoffs of around 2000 out of 3000 (mostly engineers, sales, marketing and support staff). Around 10 am they had all employees leave the buildings and on the way out the Human Resources staff gave everyone their own manila envelope telling them if they had a job to return to the following monday. An HR rep would individually escort laid off employees back to their desk/office to clean it out over the ensuing days.
Out of all those employees, only 2 or 3 caused a commotion. And more than half the HR reps worked knowing they were also being sacked. Security was then upped with all guards working 12 hr shifts 7 days a week for about a month. About the biggest incident during this time was the discovery that Hal Miller’s (prez of ITT Telecom) yard was toilet papered by one of the roving security guards, keeping a check on 3 or 4 houses of the top management.
To make a long story longer, ITT Telecom was merged/bought by Alcatel, leading to 3 more rounds of layoffs in about 3 years. Some employees got laid off 3 times, others were laid off to return the next week as long term temps, and others went into business for themselves providing ITT/Alcatel with the services the company no longer wanted in house. I vividly remember that the office relocation and phone/data line people made out very well in the chaos.
About 16 years ago, the original Oxford Mini plant was shut down and everyone lost their jobs. BMW went into Oxford, bought the plant, retooled it at enormous expense and rehired everyone who originally lost their jobs. For about 15 years, MINI has been probably one of the most successful cars ever built and sold around the world and BMW as well as their workers did well financially. I guess no one saved any of those 15 years of income for a rainy day?
It’s the 50th anniversary of the Mini. Happy anniversary. I would love to go to the Mini United event in May but it will be hard to do now.