The environment

Stuff about nature etc.

Vestas workers occupy - solidarity needed!

Tuesday 21 July Vestas workers speak out "As workers at a wind turbine manufacturer, we were confident that as the recession took hold that green or renewable energy would be the area where many jobs could be created - not lost. So we were horrified to find out that our jobs were moving abroad and that more than 525 jobs from the Isle of Wight and Southampton were going to be added to the already poor state of island unemployment. This has sent, and will continue to send, shockwaves of uncertainty through countless families on the island - many of which are being forced to relocate away from...

Support the Vestas occupation - save jobs at Vestas, save the planet!

Save jobs at Vestas, save the planet! Report received from a campaigner on the Isle of Wight, Monday 20 July: "Vestas workers have occupied the St Cross factory in Newport. This measure has been taken due to the consistent failure of Vestas Blades and the government to face up to their responsibilities in the necessary challenge of fighting climate change and maintaining jobs. "Due to management attempting to intimidate the workers who have been organising themselves in preparation for a fight, plans to move on the factory were accelerated and a team of workers have taken the plant at 7:45...

Demonstration planned to back Vestas workers

A demonstration in support of the Vestas wind turbine workers, on the Isle of Wight, is planned for Friday 24 July, and a "families and community campaign" meeting for Wednesday 22 July. Click here for details . Discussions are also under way for a demonstration at the office of Energy minister Ed Miliband in Whitehall, London. The two Vestas factories, in Newport and East Cowes, are currently due to shut on 31 July, trashing 600 jobs and Britain's only wind-turbine production facility. Campaigners are demanding that the Government take over the factories and continue wind-turbine production...

Vestas protesters take the message out

Vestas workers and supporters demonstrated in the Isle of Wight on Friday 17 July when Prince Charles visited the island. The campaign against closure of Britain's only wind turbine factories is stepping up. Vestas bosses - who have managed to prevent any union organisation in the factories over their nine years there - obviously have picked up that a new spirit of resistance is stirring among their workers. They tipped off the police, who were very anxious to restrain us when Prince Charles visited, but still did not stop us getting across our message to the crowds and winning media coverage...

Vestas campaign steps up

The campaign to save jobs at the Isle of Wight Vestas wind turbine factory is being stepped up. Following a series of meetings with a growing network of workers who are organising across the two plants on the Isle of Wight and the Southampton site, a committee of workers is discussing various concrete plans for different forms of direct action, and workers report that the mood at the factory is increasingly confident and militant. The knowledge that there is a committee of Vestas workers organising; the flood of messages of support and donations of money to the campaign from outside; the...

Vestas workers – Up for a fight!

On Friday 3 July, Workers’ Climate Action and the Cowes Trades Council held a public meeting attended by around 100 people, to oppose the closure of the Vestas plant, Britain’s only wind turbine factory, on the Isle of Wight. Two months ago, Vestas announced over 500 job cuts. It is seeking to move production to the USA. The room was packed with workers from the factory, as well as people from the wider community. By the end of the meeting, there were people seriously discussing the tactic of a factory occupation to save jobs and force much-needed investment in wind energy. How did this come...

Defend the Drax 29!

From "Friends of the Drax 29" "Last summer 29 people stopped a train containing 1,000 tonnes of coal on its way to Drax power station in Yorkshire. "They stopped the train with a red flag on a stretch of track which only went to Drax, following standard railway safety rules, boarded it, and began shovelling the coal onto the line. One was dressed as a canary - the traditional warning of dangerous pollution down a coal mine. They dropped a banner saying 'Leave It In The Ground'. "Burning coal is the biggest cause of climate change, and Drax is the biggest source of carbon dioxide emissions in...

Activists spark fight on wind turbine closure

Three activists from Workers’ Climate Action and the AWL visited the Isle of Wight on 15-18 June because we had heard that the Vestas plant there — the only wind turbine blade factory in Britain — faces closure. After four days’ work, we have a meeting set up, sponsored by Cowes Trades Council, to launch a campaign against the closure. We will be going back to the Isle of Wight, with other activists we hope, to build for that meeting in the week leading up to 3 July. Our first contact was with officers of Cowes Trades Council. They, in turn, put us in touch with Geoff Lumley, the only Labour...

Why would a bunch of environmental activists support workers in an oil refinery?

Total, the world’s sixth largest oil multinational sacked 600 workers at the Lindsey oil refinery last week. Illegal walkouts and strikes have occurred in solidarity in power stations and other sites. The Lindsey workers had already been on strike for a week in protest at the earlier sacking of 51 workers which in turn was the company’s attempt to get rid of ‘troublemakers’ in response to strike action in January/February. These layoffs have nothing to do with any closing down of operations; Total still have every intention of operating the refinery, and gaining massive profits from doing so...

Workers’ Liberty – For an ecological socialism.

Workers’ Liberty’s environment commission has convened over the last couple of years to address ourselves to the urgent ecological questions posed by capitalist society today. Our aim has been to develop Marxist ecological theory that comprehends the relationship between class society and ecology. Today, more than ever, it is clear that capitalist commodification, exploitation and degradation of nature is much the same as the operations which subjugate the working-class. The alienation of workers from the means of production and property in the populous cities of the world presupposes an...

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