Vestas Solidarity Action At SEEDA Offices

17 Sep­tem­ber 2009
Through­out the coun­try today actions are tak­ing place in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the work­ers of the Ves­ta Blades fac­to­ry on the Isle of Wight. This morn­ing the offices of the South East Eng­land Devel­op­ment Agency (SEEDA) was tar­get­ted by pro­test­ers who dropped ban­ners and built a mini wind­farm in the lob­by. SEEDA is being pres­sured to with­draw £3m of pub­lic mon­ey they’ve said they’ll give Ves­tas for a R&D facil­i­ty despite the Dan­ish com­pa­ny pulling its man­u­fac­tur­ing from the UK. Tonight there will be a protest at the Depart­ment of Envi­ron­ment and Cli­mate Change, in White­hall Place, cen­tral Lon­don.

PRESS RELEASE — CHATHAM OFFICES IN WIND POWER PROTESTS

SEEDA (South East Eng­land Devel­op­ment Agency) offices in Chatham, Kent where today vis­it­ed by pro­test­ers, as part of a nation­al day of action for Ves­tas wind tur­bine work­ers.

Occu­py­ing the lob­by of the build­ing after hang­ing ban­ners from the bal­cony of the top floor, the pro­test­ers built a mini wind farm on the devel­op­ment agency’s mod­el of the Med­way estu­ary.

Paper wind­mills were hand­ed to work­ers along with a satir­i­cal guide on build­ing wind­mills, which instruct­ed SEEDA to cut up the con­tracts promis­ing to give Ves­tas mon­ey for noth­ing.

Pres­sure is mount­ing on SEEDA to with­draw the offer of £3 mil­lion (part of £10 mil­lion of pub­lic mon­ey being giv­en toVes­tas by the gov­ern­ment) unless the Dan­ish multi­na­tion­al stand aside and allow their closed fac­to­ry on the Isle of Wight to con­tin­ue to be used for tur­bine blade man­u­fac­ture.

Ves­tas closed the fac­to­ry to move pro­duc­tion to the U.S. and slash­ing 600 green UK jobs. The work­ers then occu­pied the fac­to­ry and are demand­ing that the gov­ern­ment nation­alise the facil­i­ties, the only sig­nif­i­cant blade man­u­fac­tur­ing plant in this coun­try.

“By fail­ing to act on the clo­sure of the Ves­tas Blades fac­to­ry, and sup­port­ing a return to out­dat­ed coal pow­er (like Eon’s Kingsnorth pro­pos­al), the Gov­ern­ment is show­ing it cur­rent­ly has no seri­ous com­mit­ment to build­ing a low car­bon econ­o­my or pre­vent­ing cat­a­stroph­ic run­away cli­mate change.” Anas­taz­ja Jarek, Kingsnorth Cli­mate Action Med­way
“Ves­tas work­ers have fought mag­nif­i­cent­ly to save jobs and essen­tial wind tur­bine man­u­fac­tur­ing in Britain. The gov­ern­ment say that Ves­tas have refused to sell them the fac­to­ry, yet it is still reward­ing Ves­tas with pub­lic mon­ey through SEEDA. The gov­ern­ment needs to stop pussy­foot­ing around big cor­po­ra­tions and take seri­ous action to pro­vide jobs and pre­vent cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change.” – Steve Wilkins, Med­way Trades Coun­cil

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