Unite members 'just practising' picketing at Fujitsu in Manchester
14th October 2009
Members of the Unite union carrying placards reading 'Just
Practising' and 'Trainee Picket' staged a mock picket outside
Fujitsu's main Manchester office on Tuesday October 13th.
Unite and PCS are currently balloting its members at Fujitsu
over jobs, pay and pensions.
Fujitsu imposed a pay freeze earlier this year, despite having
reached a pay deal with Unite for Manchester staff, and the company
proposes to dismiss almost 4,000 UK staff and offer them employment
on new contracts without membership of the company's final salary
pension scheme.
The union estimates that this is equivalent to a pay cut of
around 20 per cent. The result of a national consultative ballot of
Unite members was 87 per cent in favour of a strike. Since then,
the company has announced a proposal for 1,200 redundancies in the
UK and put 6,000 staff, nearly half the UK workforce, at risk of
redundancy.
Unite says that members don't see why they should lose their
jobs and tighten their belts when last year the company announced
profits up 194 per cent to £125.9 million and paid £1.59 million as
'compensation for loss of office' to two directors.
The IT industry is not renowned for trade union militancy, but
Unite says that Fujitsu has pushed its staff too far. Many staff
have never been in a union before, or taken part in industrial
action, so members decided to practice picketing.
Photographs will be available from www.ourunion.org.uk/news.
ENDS
For more information contact Brian Gallagher on 07957 995947 or
Terry Thompson on 07768 74 66 29.
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