NISSAN, BOSCH, GLASS… No more closings and layoffs

Lowering the blind and leaving workers on the street does not bring solutions, aggravates problems. It is false that there is no other way out, here we express different proposals.

When the Japanese multinational NISSAN announced the closure of Barcelona plants, the fight against the measure began with a general feeling "NISSAN does not close". Nevertheless, the union leaders of CC.OO. and UGT agreed the deferred settlement to December 2021, something that presented as a triumph, but it wasn't. The most affected are the 500 ACCIONA subcontracted workers who were transferred to the ERE, then they will be the 25.000 directly or indirectly involved in the closure. This conflict has media significance, but he's not the only one.

Bosch management announced its intention to close the Castellet i la Gornal factory, towards the beginning of 2021. The multinational German manufactures motors for windscreen wiper brands: Fiat, the PSA group (Peugeot owner, Citroën y Opel) and the Volkswagen group. Less than two decades had a staff of 1.200 employees who were reducing until reaching 300 that now they intend to leave on the street, arguing that "he business is no longer profitable ". The union representations of CC.OO. and UGT expressed their "Total rejection" at the close and shuffle variants that goes from "The establishment of a joint venture with another company" until "A change of division within the group.”

The French multinational Saint-Gobain also announced the closure of the Glass line, that produces glass for its transformation into Sekurit, at the factory located in Arbós, Tarragona. How the fundamental furnace for production exhausted its useful life, decided to close rather than renew it, leaving without a job 122 worker. They argue that current conditions "They prevent us from envisioning alternatives in the short and medium term that allow guaranteeing minimum production and profitability". The Arbós works council rejected the measure and has called for a concentration in front of the Parliament of Catalonia, while the employer wants to start negotiating early retirement and transfers. Another that closes is Coll de Vilamalla, dedicated to the supply of parts and spare parts for automobiles. During the months of August and September, the firm transferred the majority of its employees to ERTE stating reasons "the organisation", but he entered the contest to direct his situation and manage 300 layoffs. The same happens with Nobel Plastiques Ibérica, in Sant Joan Despí, who announced the closure and dismissal of 200 employees.

The locations of the plants are different, the business origins too, but the scripts and mechanisms of the employers seem to come out of the same photocopier. They refer to the "lost profitability ", to "Crisis due to the pandemic", to "impossibility of alternative exits " to push workers into the gap of ERE, that consumes the legal dismissal. The spanish government, he Govern and the municipalities come manifesting their "concern" by the situation and in some occasions they undertake to seek "New investors" the to take action "for they stay ",  but the answers are insufficient or never arrive. The bourgeois authorities are the ones who get fat business profits with subsidies and tax breaks in the millions euros for years.

…it is essential to support the claims…

The complicities between governments and employers are in the same direction: try to make the costs of the crisis fall on the backs of the most vulnerable. Is there a different way out? Yes, there is, and it may be useful to exchange opinions on this. The employers they always report losses and financial difficulties. As in most cases hide that for years they accumulated millionaire profits, there is a way to know if it is true: require the opening of the accounting books. For another side, It is not true that if production really falls there is no alternative than leaving thousands of families on the street: the working day could be reduced and distribute the working hours without lowering wages, so that nobody loses the job.

Even so, the threat of closure is always latent and many sometimes it takes place causing enormous social damage. It can be avoided if every company that closes is nationalized, without any compensation and placed immediately under the control of your own workers. Production and administration must be left to those who carry them out every day, so that decisions are made based on the whole and not on the profits of a handful of privileged people who appropriate the work of others. The nationalizations are perfectly possible and their application has been to put on the table from the current crisis of the capitalist economy. He The problem is that bourgeois governments are very reluctant to implement them.

On this way, it is essential to support the claims, within the framework of the broadest unity of action so that they are not isolated or divided among workers "Plant" Y “Hired”. Accept closings and layoffs without further ado "In better condition" it is "Bread for today and hunger for tomorrow", since then thousands of workers will join the list of almost four million unemployed registered by the Spanish State. This does not imply placing trust in the leaders who, responding to the guidelines of the majority trade union centers, keep claims locked up, they do not coordinate with other sectors and refuse both to prepare for and to demand the calling of a general strike. That is why it is so important that new democratic and militant leaders emerge, willing to fight to the end. In the meantime, We will continue to be on the same side as ACCIONA workers, GLASS, Coll, Nobel Plastics Ibérica, Alcoa, of the metal workers who go on indefinite strike in the Bay of Cádiz, of the Uber Eats distributors in Tarragona on strike, of those who demand safe conditions in educational and healthcare settings, definitely, of those who claim for their deferred rights.