Waterford Crystal: nationalisation was the key
AN EIGHT week long occupation of the Waterford
Crystal plant in Ireland ended after the workforce reluctantly voted to
accept a ‘deal’ in March. After the four-hour meeting that resulted in
the end of the occupation, one worker said that he felt the deal was
‘like a gun to the head’ of the workforce.
There were 708 people working in Waterford Crystal.
Now there will be only 176, and some of them are only guaranteed for six
months. The so-called ‘redundancy fund’ is a miserly €10 million, which
is to be divided between more than 800 workers and ex-workers. The
workers’ pensions (affecting 1,800 people) are still in a mess and the
fund is €120 million short.
This deal will mean that the world-renowned
Waterford Crystal brand name has been purchased by the venture, or more
accurately vulture, capitalist company, KPS, which will use it to sell
glass products in its shops and on the market. The crystal that KPS will
sell as ‘Waterford Crystal’ will not even have the fingerprint of a
Waterford crafts-worker on it.
The occupation of the factory began at the end of
January, after the company’s receiver, Deloitte and Touche (D&T),
unceremoniously informed the workers that they were to be sacked with
almost immediate effect. This was despite the fact that some of the
workers had worked at the plant for more than 40 years. Shamefully, D&T
tried to enforce this decision by hiring a security company to
physically threaten and assault the workers when they sought to defend
their jobs and livelihoods at the beginning of the occupation.
The workforce instinctively took over the plant and
began the eight-week sit-in of the gallery facility, as part of their
struggle to save their jobs and the manufacturing of crystal at Kilbarry.
From the outset, many of the workers called for the
government to nationalise Waterford Crystal. This was a viable company
and there is a world-wide demand for its product. According to one
worker, there were sales of $180 million in the US last year.
The leadership of Unite, the main trade union at
Waterford Crystal, was also for nationalisation. However, it never
seriously pursued this demand. From the beginning of the occupation
until the end, the Unite leadership put all of its energy into getting a
private multinational to take over the company.
Yet it became clear from early in the process that
the only private buyers interested in Waterford Crystal were venture
capitalists intent on making a quick profit at the workforce’s expense.
No capitalist multinational, whose primary interest is profit, was ever
going to take over the company, guarantee a significant number of jobs,
maintain wages and conditions, pay out decent redundancy payments, and
cough up the €120 million to shore up the pension fund. It was always
the intention of KPS and Clarion to take whatever they could from
Waterford Crystal and cast the majority of the workforce and pensioners
aside.
The only option from the outset that could have
saved all of the jobs at Kilbarry, ‘rescued’ the pension fund, and taken
Waterford Crystal forward as a viable and profitable company, was
nationalisation. The leadership of Unite only really spoke of
nationalisation as a last option – in the event that a private buyer
could not be found – and that, somehow, the government would then have
to step in. This position, of effectively ruling out nationalisation,
played a major role in the defeat of the Waterford Crystal workers.
However, throughout the occupation and struggle, the
workers received support from the majority of people in the Waterford
region. They also received solidarity support from workers all over the
world. Against the backdrop of the nationalisation of Anglo Irish Bank,
the €7 billion bailout of Allied Irish Bank and the Bank of Ireland, and
the €90 billion bailout of property developers and other banks, a
credible campaign for the nationalisation of Waterford Crystal could
have been built that would have received the support of the majority of
people in Ireland.
The world-class skills and talents of the craft
workers at Waterford Crystal, along with the other staff, could have
then taken on responsibility to run the company. Waterford Crystal,
freed from the shackles of profiteers, like Tony O’Reilly, could have
been democratically run by the workforce and would have had a future.
The destruction of Waterford Crystal will have a
major impact on the wider economy of the Waterford region. The Fianna
Fáil and Green Party government should be condemned for refusing to
nationalise Waterford Crystal and are also to blame for the hundreds who
have lost their jobs. But Fianna Fáil and the Greens were never going to
willingly nationalise the company – this goes against their neo-liberal
ethos.
Nationalisation could have been achieved if a real
battle by the leadership of the Unite trade union had been fought which
mobilised the support for the Waterford Crystal workers that existed
throughout the country and beyond. As Donie Fell, a Waterford Crystal
worker, said in an interview with The Socialist (newspaper of the
Socialist Party in Ireland): "We need to wake up and put a stop to this.
We have to stop being afraid to say nationalise. Our unions have got to
stop pandering to the bosses and do what they are supposed to do,
represent us, that is why we pay them".
Cillian Gillespie & Stephen Boyd
