In the beginning, there was nothing -- which exploded - Terry Pratchett
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Fujitsu workers are set to strike
UNITE, the UK workers union has confirmed that IT services company Fujitsu will face another strike action.
The strikes started yesterday, when snow prevented a lot of people from getting to work anyway, and continues through today and onto the 11th, 14th and 15th of January. Unite will probably be hoping that the weather will improve over the weekend to make it a real strike and not simply weather related.
According to the union 75 per cent of its members voted to take the strike action, following an earlier protest in December of last year. That was the first ever national strike to affect a UK IT company, the union added. The aggravation concerns redundancies at a firm where the union believes such action is not necessary, along with a pay freeze and plans to close a pension scheme that will cost clock-in workers about 20 per cent of their overall salaries.
Peter Skyte, Unite national officer, said, "Whilst we remain ready and willing to talk at any time, Fujitsu remains a highly profitable company but has to date shown little willingness to seriously address the underlying issues of jobs, pay and pensions. Other IT companies are dealing with similar issues in a much more constructive way and the approach taken by Fujitsu to date treats its highly skilled workforce as a disposable commodity rather than its most important asset."
Fujitsu employs around 11,500 people in the UK and its sites can be found at Bracknell, Stevenage, Manchester, Crewe, Belfast, Staines, Basingstoke, Wakefield, Sheffield, Solihull, Telford, Swansea, Slough, Lewes, Warrington, Cardiff, Londonderry, Bristol, Newcastle and London.
Unite advises us that Fujitsu makes significant profits in the UK, including £200m before tax in 2008. µ
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I'm with the (now former) Fujitsu-Siemens in east EU, and the same theme applies, as we work very, very hard to satisfy all clients and their equipment, no matter the time and place it is never enough for the incompetent management that does almost nothing.
They just come to work (very late at that) drink coffee all day and shuffle some papers (no, not the real tenders) and go home in their company cars with all expenses payed (for no reason I might add). And that goes for the sales idiots even more... incompetent to sell anything. And the leadership (the board) does nothing, just complain about the expenses those same idiots did with their wrong sales practices (wrong equipment sold, lacking info in tenders, no ability to sell additional services...)
And most of all that pisses me off is that there is no answerability on their part, they can do whatever they want, spend however they want and nobody gives them on the head. How the hell should we be profitable when they spend all on their malpractice and huge bonuses for nothing. Meh...
Fujitsu worker you seem to realise that the 1600 members of unite does not include the members in the PCS union. It so transparent where your "spin" is coming from.
I am sure that the people on strike would prefer that they weren't as they take pride in their work. It really is sad that large companies just see numbers.
I have to say, that I have worked with Fujitsu as a IT outsourcer for a couple of my major clients and they are absolutely SHIT! There’s no other way of describing the level of service they have provided me with. I utterly hate them and I mean that.
I’m sorry for the general workers et al. in the company, but my two major clients dropped you after breaking free of their three year contracts and were so grateful I cannot put into words their sentiments.
If you employ a bunch of tossers to run the company, what the hell do you expect? The management there are F**king useless!
I have never, in my 17 years working in IT, come across a more crappy company.... period....
Would I recommend you? Er, no.....
Sack the management twats driving their expensive cars and drawing huge salaries and do a management buyout. That’s the only way you’re going to save your jobs. If you leave these a-holes where they are, you’re a memory. Been there, got the T-shirt and wide-screen edition.
All the people on the ground, with whom I worked, were nice people; enthusiastic and hard working, it’s the ones at the top you need to get rid of.
Lots of ‘really’ bad memories,
Dave The Rave xxx
Pretty transparent, there.
...is that while you report 75% of union members support the strike, you fail to note that union members only account for about 10% of the total workforce (so I make the relevant figure to be about 7.5% of the total workforce). The rest of us, meanwhile, continue to work and are grateful for our jobs, but don't let that stand in the way of a good headline.