Be Excellent To Each Other

So, as some of you may know from reading the Norman Tebitt thread, or have seen reported in the national media, Diageo last week announced to 700 staff at their Kilmarnock packaging site that the factory is closing. For those of you who don't know, this is where I work.
Diageo are the worlds biggest drinks company owning such brands as Smirnoff, Gordons, Guinness, Jose Cuervo Tequila, Blossom Hill, J&B and many many more including the worlds number one Scotch whisky brand, Johnnie Walker.

John Walker was born in Kilmarnock and started blending, bottling and selling his whisky here in 1820. Although it is not a big brand in the UK, anywhere else in world if you mention Kilmarnock, people know it through it's links to Johnnie Walker. The decision to close the factory was made under a veil of worldwide recession when in fact this plant is the most profitable out of three packaging sites in Scotland and the company made in excess of £1.6 billion in the 6 months to December 08 in profit.

The decision is particularly hard to take since they have also announced plans to build an extra bottling hall at another site in Scotland which they propose could provide 400 new jobs. This site is not commutable from Kilmarnock.

I am very lucky in that I know my job is safe for at least 3 years as I would be transferred to the Glasgow site when this one shuts but I am in a very unique position. I accepted this news with a very heavy heart and have had to watch as my colleagues accepted there livelihood was being snatched away.

However. A fight back has started. The political parties have united and are calling themselves the Johnnie Walker party. The council have organised a protest march and rally. The national and international media are outraged. Celebrities have waded in. Diageo are beginning to get unsettled and announced yesterday they would consider reversing this decision.

There is a very good chance this is an unwinnable fight and everyone here is scared to harbour false hope however when I was walking into work this morning it was amazing to see a poster in every window I passed. An online petition has started, please please sign it. Diageo are monitoring all that is happening and they are reading comments so every little helps. They tried to close the Guinness brewery in Dublin and public opinion forced a change of heart so maybe, just maybe, the same is possible here. Sorry for the long post.

http://www.keepjohnniewalkerinkilmarnock.com/
http://www.savejohnniewalker.org/?id=home
http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MemberId=9561469543
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=1 ... 148&ref=nf

The petition can be found here.
http://www.gopetition.co.uk/petitions/s ... /sign.html
News stories can be found on the BBC website as well as every Scottish broadsheets website such as the Glasgow Herald, The Scotsman and I believe the Guardian as well.

As one commentator said, Diageo are killing the goose which laid the golden egg.

Flippin'eck.

Apologies for immediately straying off topic, but does the music shop Valhalla still exist in Kilmarnock?

I think so, I know it moved premises fairly recently but I think it is still going.

I have mixed feelings about this. In some ways it's great that people can get together and become so passionate about saving so many people's livelihoods, but in others it reminds me of Sachsgate and how public opinion can force companies to do things they didn't want to do.

Obviously it's good for you and your colleagues, Gill. I'm obviously a step removed and am looking at the big picture.

Scots fight for whisky.

I have tried to be very rational about the whole situation and I appreciate the fact that they are a business. The problem is they have used Kilmarnock as a major part of the brand for a long time and now have decided to take it away, only to transfer the whole operation somewhere else. The politicans, union and economists are studying the business case right now but so far they haven't found any reason (financial, logistical or otherwise) why they can't expand the Kilmarnock site and continue operating here. This decision was made out of pure greed and although my job is not at stake I can see the effect it will have on everyone I work with.
The closure of this factory alone will make East Ayrshire the biggest employment blackspot in Scotland-why shouldn't people take a stand where there are alternative options that they aren't even considering?

Oh and one more thing-there is a feeling that this sort of move is designed to start breaking ties with the history and identity of the brand so that some point in the future the packaging operations can be moved to Asia. We fight this now so we don't have to deal with that. Legislation has been proposed to make it necessary to bottle the whisky in Scotand for it to be called Scotch whisky, currently it only needs to be distilled in Scotland.

Yeah, that's fair enough. I obviously don't know enough of the situation to properly comment. However, there are always three sides to the story, after all.

/DA

Signed.

Consider it signed mate, with a comment.

Cheers guys

I don't expect my factory to be saved but I hope
this campaign makes Diageo think twice before planning to take packaging operations abroad.

So there is a march through Kilmarnock on Sunday about my work. A local poet has written a poem about the situation. It's quite good if anyone fancies a wee read.

Also, mods how can I change the subtitle?

Smack the edit button in the first post, I think.

Edit it in your first post Gill.

Also: Signed

Just edit the first post.

Any more?

Signed with pleasure. Hope they change their minds.

Thank you! I hadn't thought to edit the first post.

This isn't about forcing a company to do something they don't want to do. This is about huge global companies who make billions in profit each year realising they have to have some degree of corporate responsibility. They are trying to close the most profitable site in Scotland which is also the home of the brand that is produced here. Johnnie Walkers was called Walkers Kilmarnock for a time and it has always been in Kilmarnock.
The companies latest half year accounts show Diageo made a profit of £1.64billion in the six months to the end of December, raising earnings per share by 21%.

This closure is going to remove £17 million from the local economy in wages alone, and make East Ayrshire the biggest unemployment blackspot in the UK. Not to allow the business to survive, but to make MORE profits. Why does everyone think that the UK should let this sort of thing happen? When we have a product which by its very nature needs to be produced here, and which this company has made a fortune from, why shouldnt we safeguard the jobs here?
Diageo themselves last year called Johnnie Walker the star of its very extensive portfolio. What about the people who put it there?

I agree with Gill.

Yeah.

Why are the people here against the public pressuring big companies?

Quite. If Diageo wanted a product which isn't strongly identified with a particular region and produced by the people of that region since forever, then they should have been selling insurance rather than Johnnie Walker.

They chose to live or die by brand loyalty - that aught to go both ways.

You misspelled "Scotch"



Are they?

They can pressure them buy not buying the product, which will end up with the plant closing and then it won't be the companies' fault so it's win/win for them, I guess.

Well, there's at least two people posting saying that, amongst not many other comments, in a thread which is clearly trying to gather support for pressuring a big company.

So I can see how one might get that idea.

Or by arranging a petition, marches and trying to obtain public support, as they are doing.

If you stopped bying the product, won't they just close the factory anyway, as product sales have dropped?

People working here aren't daft, they realise that at this stage boycotting Diageo products is counter-productive and asking people to do that is not going to gather much support. So far the online petition has exceeded 10000 signatures and there is also a written petition which has been doing the rounds in Kilmarnock.
Every shop in Kilmarnock has a poster in its window supporting the workers and the sign on the entrance to Kilmarnock has been changed by the council to now read Keep Johnnie Walker In Kilmarnock. The rally and march are being organised by the council and attended by the Scottish first minister as well as representatives as all the major political parties. The purpose of this is to get more media attention. After nightshift on Monday night the workers left silently with Johnnie Walker masks on covering their faces. They had cleverly contacted local press who captured this on camera and the site director was storming around on Tuesday because the company really does not want negative media attention.
I really don't know if there is a chance of the site surviving but I am going to support any actions which raise the profile of this situation.

1) Where does it say to stop buying the product?
2) They already are closing this factory, that is the cause of the protest, not the result.

So, I'm missing your point here.

Yeah they should organise a petition or something.

Also, sales of Johnnie Walker in the UK are relatively tiny. The brands main market is America and Asia. So boycotting Johnnie Walker in the UK would have little to no impact on the sales.

Not that boycotting the product is something the protest is encouraging anyway.

aha, you manage to make my point a few posts earlier

Have you started looking for alternate work when the inevitable happens?

That sounds a bit like the Michael Moore bit in (I think it's The Big One) where he goes to the Payday factory in Illinois where they're now facing the factory closing despite high sales. An executive (off camera) tells Moore that had they made even more profit, they'd have closed the place even sooner. Which is, as Moore tells him, insane.

It was more of a dig at the attitude of the porridge wogs to scotch, but a poorly written one.

I have been told I will be kept on until I have finished my apprenticeship which gives me another three years, so they are planning on sending me to another plant when this one closes.
So just so it's clear, I have a job no matter what happens. There is even a good chance I could get kept on once the three years have passed. I'm not trying to get support out of desperation for my job or out of fear for my future. I just despise the decision which has been made and I don't want to see the people I work with lose their jobs. The people who work on the lines are truly unskilled. They earn over £20,000 a year. They are going to really struggle to get another job, never mind a job which pays anything like what they currently earn. THey are going to lose their homes, their cars, everything. They are proud people who have worked their whole lives in a town which is slowly going to ruin and now they are going to have sign on.
I want people to realise the personal impacts on the people who work here, not just the business aspect. I certainly had no idea what this sort of thing was like since I had never experienced it before. My generation has been lucky that way.

In MaliA's post. Admittedly only in the first half of it.

Isn't this unfair dismissal/redudancy of 400 people?

If you fire someone on grounds of redudancy, then immediately hire someone cheaper to take his place, it's unfair dismisall and you can SUE THE PANTS OFF THEM. How is this any different?

Well they are closing this factory because they say the want to reduce the number of lines they have running in Scotland from 38 to 28. They are doing this by closing here and expanding the Leven site to have a new bottling hall which will take production from here. So the jobs here will no longer exist but they are suggesting staff here could apply for the new positions in Leven.
Trouble is, there are 400 new jobs in Leven and 700 people lsing their job here. Out of the 400 new jobs, 150 are fixed term contracts for 3 or 6 months. Leven is the other side of Scotland (Scotchland) so it isn't commutable. So even if people here got a job there, they would have to buy a new house, take their kids out of school, leave their friends and family...

Has anyone consulted a lawyer?

Well the union have hired economists to work on the business case and Scottish Enterprise are getting people involved as well. We also have the Scottish government doing what they can. So I am pretty sure we have lawyers in the mix somewhere.

Sorry for the late reply,Friday afternoon nap.

Diageo announced their full year results today.

FULL YEAR F09 REPORTED
Volume (in millions of equivalent units 141.3
Net sales £9,311m
Operating profit £2,443m
Basic earnings per share (EPS) 65.2p
Free cash flow £1,204m
Recommended full year dividend per share 22.2p


There are some quite annoyed people in work this morning, especially when the results are accompanied by Q&S with senior management who have such gems as this to share-


David Gosnell, managing director, Global Supply (where I work)
Q. What are you most proud of in terms of Global Supply and Global Procurement's contribution to Diageo in F09?

A. To be fair, it is quite hard to pull out particular highlights in what has no doubt been an unprecedented year.

At the end of the day it is my job to help ensure that Diageo remains highly competitive in all the parts of the world where we produce or procure. That can mean making some tough calls, as people close to home in Ireland and Scotland in particular know. Through all this, we have resolutely put the interests of our own people first - and have endeavoured to treat each and every one with dignity and respect. This has meant our receiving some serious criticism from external commentators for sure, but we haven't flinched. If I'm honest, I'm probably most proud of all of this.

I am trying my very best to look at this from a business point of view, but I still wish that every single one of the senior management team could come and work here for a month, alongside normal people. Like Secret Millionare.

Man, every time I arrive at work in a good mood something else happens to knock me back down again. Don't even get me started on last week.

Gill we are getting the same HP want to get rid of another 300 jobs, but as they are doing it slowly it is not hitting the papers!!

Ok...sorry I don't really know how to respond to that. If I am coming across as being self-centred or selfish then I apologise because I don't mean to. I am in a unique situation which means that I am one of the only members of staff here who isn't losing their job-I'm not posting about this because I want sympathy, I am just posting because this is a huge thing that is happening in my working life right now and because I am unhappy with the behaviour of my employer who is doing this to increase an already huge profit.

Hi Gill, you are not being selfish or self-centred. I was just saying that even the big profit making companies like HP are reducing the work force too..

This thread also makes me think of the radio 2, DJ