The Nigel Cook story
PolyGram is one of the three biggest music companies in the world. It operates in forty countries worldwide, and its list of artists reads like the attendance list at a royal funeral: Elton John, Luciano Pavarotti, Sting, Celine Dion and of course the Spice Girls. It produced the biggest-selling single of all time: Candle in the Wind.
In its attempts to reduce production costs and maximise profits, PolyGram has started to outsource some of its functions. Included in this is the packaging department: formerly in-house, it has moved to a factory 300 yards away from PolyGram on the same site. Conditions for the packaging workers contrast sharply with those within the main factory: the lowest-paid receives only £3.70 per hour, less than two-thirds that of their company employed counterpart. They have no contract of employment and are paid neither holiday leave nor sick pay nor a pension scheme. Staff largely consist of ethnic-minority women and children, most of whom have just left school. Their jobs are described as ‘stand-up’; they are expected to ask permission to go to the toilet. They can be called into work at an hour’s notice and it is not uncommon to be sent home after only a couple of hours. The owners’ dogs roam the factory and have been known to defecate in the canteen. Any worker can be told to clear it up.
This appalling situation is not taking place in a Far Eastern country, nor is it exceptional. It is the story of M&S Packaging (Blackburn) Ltd, packing PolyGram CDs in Lancashire, England (No relation to Marks and Spencers PLC). Owned and operated by David and Kate McCarthy, its sole function is to put PolyGram CDs in cases and wrap them in cellophane. The entire procedure, including the costing of the work, is constantly monitored and supervised by PolyGram.
On 17th March 1997 at a debtors hearing of Swindon County Court M&S Packaging Ltd were placed into administration. Creditor Swift Employment Recruitment Ltd, who were owed £100,000 filed for M&S Packaging’s bankruptcy. This followed M&S Packaging Ltd setting up their own recruitment company called UK Recruitment Ltd. From then on M&S Packaging was run by a court appointed administrator.
One of M&S’s employees, Nigel Cook, had been having endless problems with his pay - falling as much as £600 short for many weeks - and after speaking to the court-appointed administrator running M&S, held a public meeting to discuss forming a union to fight back against the appalling way he and others had been treated.
The adiministrator sacked him after Nigel’s full-page casualisation article in the newspaper Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism was published. Current legislation is such the administrator did not even have to give a reason for dismissing Nigel. The Transport and General Workers Union supported Nigel’s right to organise and submitted an application to an Industrial Tribunal for unfair dismissal.
The tribunal notified Nigel a day before his hearing was due to commence that a technicality meant that there was no chance of success. According to Section 11(3) of the Insolvency Act 1986, during the period for which an Administration Order is in force [as in the situation with M&S], ‘...(d) No other proceedings and no execution or other legal process may be commenced or continued, and no distress may be levied, against the Company or its property except with the consent of the Administrator or the leave of the Court and subject (where the Court gives leave) to such terms as aforesaid.’
There is no legal precedent to this kind of case, which currently allows companies in liquidation to sack employees at will, regardless of length of service, and the same sacked workers have no immediate redress to an industrial tribunal. The ruling, given by district judge Mrs Raskin in the Swindon County Court on 5 September this year, sets a very dangerous precedent. The judgement is being appealed and a court date for next year is likely.
PolyGram’s response to this, despite the fact that they effectively run M&S Packaging anyway, is as disappointing as it is unsurprising. In a recent letter, their head of corporate communications claims: ‘PolyGram has no ownership or direction of M&S Packaging...so its employment and remuneration policies are not within our control...the welfare of workers at M&S Packaging is entirely the responsibility of the management there.’
* Rally on Sat. Dec. 6th. See Diary p.48
Campaign contact:
The Reinstate Nigel Cook Campaign, PO Box 14, Accrington, Lancs BB5 1GG Tel: 01254 679605
Polygram the facts
* Polygram is 75% owned by Phillips
* Sales in 1996 £2,965 million
* Assets in 1996 £2,940 million
* Directors have links to Unilever, Royal Dutch Shell, Total and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines
* Stewart Till, Polygram UK Chief Executive appointed under Labour to co-chair the Government’s ‘Film Working Group’
Casualisation the facts
Britain, 1997
* Only 35% of all employees are in full-time tenured jobs
* 3.9 million workers earn less than £4 per hour
* 1.5 million earn less than £3.25 per hour
* 800,000 women workers earn less than £2.50 per hour
* The average wage of those moving from unemployment into a job is a mere £100 per week
* Ten million workers are without employment rights because they have been in their current job for less than two years.