According to Cambridge News, around 500 people attended, which was a fantastic turnout. They were addressed by
- Richard Howitt, the local Labour MEP
- David Howarth, the local Lib Dem MP
- Tony Burke, Assistant General Secretary of Unite
- Ann Field, Unite National Officer
- Tom Woodcock, Chair of Cambridge Trades Council
- Roger Gascoigne from Cambridge Printing
- Doug Williamson from Macmillan's Unite Committee, who came across from Oxford and for whose solidarity we were particularly grateful.
David Howarth told us he's raised his concerns about the job cuts personally with Stephen Bourne and others have been in touch with the University Vice Chancellor and the Press Syndicate.
The rally and the march around the city centre drew media coverage - see the links on the sidebar - and the attention of the general public to our fight against the cuts: all in all it was a great start to our campaign.
The 30 days' consultation with staff in Education and Cambridge-Hitachi continues, as does the 90 days' consultation in the Printing section.
On the publishing side, this week the Press have conceded that workers should be represented in the consulting process, after pressure from Unite. Some pertinent questions were raised at the first formal meeting last Thursday, such as how redeployment will work in practice and what impact an offer of redeployment would have on redundancy entitlement (clarification has now been sent to staff). The next consultation will explore how viable the proposed new structure is, how it will be able to deliver the product committed to, how a reduced sales force can be effective, whether building the structure to a budget rather than what is needed to be successful with new targets may be a downward spiral, and how Cambridge-Hitachi think they can turn an approx £200K FY09 loss into a FY10 profit of £365K with a severely reduced team. In this way Unite hopes to be able to defend roles that are currently down to be cut.
No comments:
Post a Comment