Union busting tactics fail at Derry factory

Unpublished article for uniteLandworker magazine of Spring 2024  

Thanks to UNITE, American computer storage company Seagate has failed to keep secret the benefits of trade unionism from its Derry factory employees. This is despite employing a union buster who has previously helped notorious anti-union company Amazon prevent union recognition in its US warehouses.

Workers at the Seagate tech business can now look forward to being represented by Unite and electing workplace representatives to meet with management and improve workplace terms and conditions.

The Springtown factory produces a tiny specialised part for hard drives called a recording head.

In a region where small to medium enterprises and the low paid agrifood sector dominate employment opportunities, Seagate Technology is one of the biggest employers in north west Ireland. It employs around 1,600, around half on the manufacturing process, many of whom travel long distances from rural locations.

When the Derry site was opened in 1993 by Seagate, which in 2011 swapped its place of incorporation from the Cayman Islands to Dublin to take advantage of Ireland’s low corporate tax rate of 12.5%, it was known, like many similar green field locations across Ireland, as a non-union location.

Only around 40 individual workers had joined Unite.

“We began a membership drive in October 2022. It was done secretly as possible. We talked off site to potential members and provided them with relevant information through newsletters about the benefits of being Unite members. Management found but we were by then speaking to workers as they entered and left work,” explains Unite organiser Lynn McKinty.

The enthusiasm meant that membership figures soon exceeded 500 amongst the manufacturing workers. “It was a massive show of strength,” and “so we approached the company for a voluntary recognition agreement to allowed bargaining for these workers. We were not surprised that Seagate, like other companies, responded negatively,” says Lynn. Unite thus applied to the Industrial Court for statutory recognition.

Unite held a ballot in January 2023 and 540 members – 93% of whom voted - gave the thumbs up for a union recognition deal with their employer who openly made clear their opposition with numerous anti-union leaflets, some posted to people’s homes, compulsory individual and mass meetings with managers speaking negatively about Unite. Seagate also employed two union busters who provided training for managers on how to deliver an anti-union message.

One of these was Bradley Moss, a consultant on union-avoidance, He had secretly worked for $375 an hour in two US Amazon warehouses in 2022 seeking, successfully, to convince 12,000 workers to vote against unionising. 

Having demonstrated they had over 50% union membership in their bargaining unit at Seagate - where workers, after working throughout COVID, were refused a cost-of-living payment increase by a company that had made record profits - Unite succeeded at the Industrial Court for statutory recognition and finally won after Seagate lost an appeal for a judicial review in the High Court of Justice.

“It is massive for Seagate workers and Unite regionally. The company has till to 19 March to decide on how to bring both parties together. If necessary, the court will impose what the bargaining agreement will consist of. “

 

“We are looking at organising the 250 engineers and tech guys as they also want a collective bargaining agreement.”