One of the lessons of the tragedy of East Kilbride is: Get Unionised. The 900 workers at Freescale Semiconductor’s fab which has been put up for sale are not in a union recognised by the company. It looks now as if they should have been.
Though some workers at East Kilbride are members of unions, the non-recognised status of these unions has meant that they have not been granted access to the company’s top management.
“It’s incredibly frustrating that we aren’t getting the information”, says Andrew Dodgshon of the Unite union which represents some of the Freescale workers.
Dodgshon blames Freescale’s new owners, a consortium of private equity funds led by Blackstone (Yes that’s the company who’s boss, Steve Schwarzman, gave himself a $5m birthday party earlier this year).
“We’re dealing with private equity companies which are secretive organisations”, says Dodgshon, “we may have good relationships with the local management, but they are not any better informed than we are, because of the private equity owners. That’s not unique to East Kilbride, it’s the nature of private equity owners.”
Blackstone and its partners loaded up Freescale with $6bn of debt while, this year, Freescale’s business has performed worse than last year, so squeezing the company’s ability to meet the interest payments payable on the debt.
Freescale CEO Michel Mayer has already taken $20m for signing up to the private equity buy-out.
Meanwhile 900 families in a relatively depressed part of the UK stand to lose their livelihoods.
Against a backdrop of $5m birthday parties, and $20m hand-outs to the boss, this situation stinks.
If ever there was a case for accelerating the spread of unionisation, if not for an outright return to communism, the private equity companies are making it.
Leave a comment