AMICUS and British Manufacturing

By Nick Wright

Alstrom employees and other engineering and manufacturing industry workers campaigned at the recent British Labour Party conference over government inaction on the crisis in British manufacturing.

The protest linked workers from Alstrom, BAE Systems, Shell, Rolls Royce and Rover in a mass picket.

Alstrom have recently won a £100m order to build new rolling stock for London Underground. They then announced that the work would be carried out in France, Germany or Spain. Amicus, the engineering and manufacturing union, has been recently campaigning against Alstrom's decision to close its Birmingham plant, a move that threatens 1400 jobs.

Amicus want the government to follow the lead of the French, German and Spanish governments, who have quota systems that make it much harder to export manufacturing jobs.

(Red Pepper, issue 113, November 2003)