Diageo wants to walk away from Ayrshire
by Richie Venton - 16th July 2009
It's a classic case of the greedy rich sacrificing human beings to amass even more profit.
The announcement by the world's biggest drinks company, Diageo, that they will shut the giant bottling plant in Kilmarnock, plus the distillery and cooperage in Glasgow, have provoked a wave of justified rage.
The whisky firm has been in Kilmarnock since 1820, the Glasgow cooperage since 1810. After two centuries of workers' skills, hard graft and sacrifice helping the owners stack up billions in profits, these ruthless exploiters have declared war on whole communities.
They want the 'Striding Man' to walk away from Ayrshire. It would mean the direct loss of 700 jobs in Kilmarnock (making it one of the worst unemployment blackspots in the whole of Scotland) and another 140 in Glasgow. And that's not taking any account of the knock-on effects, with shops, haulage firms and others facing devastation from the decisions of remote boardroom bosses who put profit first, second and always.
And they can't even trot out the lame excuse that "it's the recession"! It is NOT due to plummeting sales. This is the world's biggest drinks firm. In just the last 6 months of 2008 - yes, half the year - Diageo piled up £1.63billion in profit!
But their top bosses have blurted out the real reason for the threatened
closures: "We want to protect future profit levels".
Nor can they claim they are cutting back on all expenditure to save the
company. They have just forked out to get the Johnnie Walker logo on
Lewis Hamilton's helmet at Grand Prix races. This is part of a £90 million
leap in advertising expenditure - from £643m in the first half of 2008
to £732m in the second half.
The top dogs in Diageo will certainly not suffer. Chief Executive Paul
Walsh last year 'earned' £2.3million! A million of that was his 'basic'
salary; £1.19m a 'performance bonus'; £39,000 in other benefits. And
that takes no account of his 720,000 shares in Diageo, worth about £6m
- or his pension pot of £8.26m, which makes the much maligned Sir Fred
Goodwin look like a pensioner pauper!
These criminals have the cheek to make speeches about the social responsibility of corporations, and then announce annihilation for whole communities. Paul Walsh is European chairman of an outfit called the International Business Leaders' Forum, which tries to promote big business as a way to build "sustainable and equitable societies"!
That's a sick joke for starters: big business exists to make profits,
not to help people, and builds a gaping chasm of inequality into society.
But if you think the idea of money-grabbing capitalists being the source
of "sustainable and equitable societies" is monstrous, it gets
worse. Paul Walsh told the IBLF conference
"Above all, I want Diageo to become a byword for integrity, social responsibility and commitment to the communities in which it operates. I want business with soul."!
The people of Kilmarnock and Glasgow are up in arms at this betrayal
for profit. Window posters, petitions, summits with councils and government
ministers, and a rally in Kilmarnock are all part of the resistance.
To add insult to injury, Diageo bosses try to say there is an option
for the workers facing devastation: there are 400 jobs being created
at a bottling plant in Leven, Fife!
Who the hell do they think is going to commute from Ayrshire or Glasgow
to Fife to work? And why should families be uprooted for the sake of "protecting
future profit levels"?
Big business is out for one thing only: profit. The only way to resist their butchery is through decisive action, people uniting in their unions and communities, marching, protesting, looking at industrial action to hit the profiteers where it hurts - their wallets.
The governments of Westminster and Edinburgh should not offer to subsidise these corporate gangsters' profits from public funds; they should demand Diageo drop all redundancy and closure plans, and if they refuse to bow to public outrage, step in and take over their assets, to sustain the jobs.
As one Kilmarnock man put it: "What would the farm born grocer [Johnnie Walker] say? Shame on you Diageo, 189 years of tradition sacrificed for some fat cat's wallet!"
The SSP will fight all the way alongside workers and their communities, united to fight the closures, putting people before profit - a real version of social responsibility.