Socialist Party Wales Socialism In Wales
About 100 workers at Panasonic in Cardiff have taken their second day of strike action for a decent pay rise. Panasonic has offered yet another pay freeze. The workers, members of the GMB, are demanding 5%, itself a stand-still pay rise merely keeping up with cost of inflation after years of pay freezes and below-inflation pay rises.
Panasonic, which has an annual turnover of £50B a year, claims it cannot afford a real term pay increase this year. It offered the Cardiff workforce 1%, but when that was rejected it withdrew even that paltry rise.
Production workers are paid the minimum wage of just £9.18 an hour despite having have important skills. Their pay would rise by 3.5% to £9.50 anyway in April because of the rise in the minimum wage.
The company managed to keep production of microwaves going through the first strike day but much of the work had to be binned because the work using unskilled labour was no good. The company would have lost thousands.
Skilled warehouse workers are currently paid £10.50 an hour while the going rate for their level of skills are more like £13 an hour.
In the past Panasonic was seen as a good place to work, but for years Panasonic workers’ pay has fallen further and further behind the cost of living with pay freezes and below-inflation pay rises every year. The company has been chasing low wages, closing down plants in Cardiff and Newport 15 years ago and transferring production to new factories in the eastern Europe and Vietnam.
After years of pay cuts and bullying management Cardiff workers have had enough. 40 workers have turned out to support the the picket line. An overtime ban continues. The next two strike days are on November 29th and December 6th and the strikers are looking to spread the strike through the site with members looking to move to two day strikes.
