Occupations

New wave of workplace occupations

An article from Richie Venton - the Scottish Socialist Party workplace organiser on the occupations

 

 

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Resisting redundancy and recession: appraising the tactic of occupation

In regard to workplace occupations, the decision relates to workers’ assessments of their situation and their expectations about whether this will bring useful leverage.

In times of recession and restructuring, the occupation or sit-in tactic is potentially a powerful tool when workers are faced with redundancy because it provides leverage that strikes often cannot. Yet, since late 2007 when the global downturn began, we have witnessed very few examples of occupation – certainly far fewer than might have been expected given the depth and extent of recession. read more »

Workers’ Control in the UK

Within the ‘first industrial nation’, which also established the first industrial proletariat, we might trace the workers’ control tradition back to Luddite resistance to mechanisation and de-skilling of established trades around the turn of the 19th century.  Formally demands for workers’ control, both for control within and over the means of production, were raised from the early twentieth century. These initially came with the influence of syndicalist ideas in the emergence of ‘new unionism’ and came to a head with the ‘shop stewards movement’ amongst skilled engineering and shipbuilding workers around the end of wartime production.  A rather more reformist version of workers’ control, ‘guild socialism’ remained significant politically into the 1920s, builders co-operatives or ‘guilds’ being involved in the post-war house-building boom.  read more »

The South London Women’s Hospital Occupation 1984-85

Some background on hospital occupations, which goes back to the late 1970s. In the early 1970s both the private and private sector was being restructured: partly in response to IMF directives, and in response to the relatively high wages and defenses (‘restrictive’ work practices that workers built up through the years. This ‘restructuring’ took the form of further centralisation, deskilling, redundancies, productivity deals, speed-ups, casualisation, tougher discipline. This is highly simplified — but we’ll leave it for the time being.

Since this restructuring often involved closures, people began occupying workplaces instead of simply going on strike. read more »

Oh Sit Down!

Accounts of sitdown strikes and workplace occupations in the UK and around the world. Compiled by libcom.org - a resource for discontented workers, 2008

Table of contents
2001: Brighton bin men's strike and occupation
2000: Cellatex chemical plant occupation, France
2007: Migrant workers' occupation wins, France
2004: Strike and occupation of IT workers at Schneider Electrics, France
2008: 23 day long occupation of major power-plant in northern Greece ends in police repression
1972: Under new management - Fisher-Bendix occupation
2003: Zanon factory occupation - interview with workers, Argentina read more »

The Occupation at Briant Colour Printing

Occupations in Britain in 1970s

Among the many occupations that took place in the early 1970s the occupation at Briant Colour Printing (BCP), a print shop situated on Old Kent Road in South London, stands out as one of the most prolonged and also one of the most successful ones. The occupation lasted more than a year, from 21 June 1972 until 3 July 1973.

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