Debra and Jon Cooley met at the Blundstone boot factory, where they have worked most of their lives. They had just taken out a loan for their dream home when Blundstone announced, on January 16, that it was closing up shop. Three hundred and thirty staff like the Cooleys, and Jade Archer and his partner, who are too old to start apprenticeships, now face an uncertain future as their skills are made redundant.
Blundstone — established in 1870 — is sacking all its staff in Tasmania and 30 people in New Zealand to move operations to Thailand. The Hobart factory is one of the biggest employers of local semi-skilled labour.
The closure of the Hobart factory will strip millions from the local economy; industries built around delivering related products and services will also face reduced demand.
Blundstone CEO Steve Gunn was regarded by his employees as a fair boss. "Blundstone was like a family", said Debra. "There was a real camaraderie." Gunn "attempted to make a go of manufacturing in Tasmania", said Archer, and received a federal subsidy to do so.
However, a higher motive directed Gunn's aims.
As CEO, Gunn's biggest responsibility is to the company's shareholders. These largely faceless men in suits have given Blundstone large piles of money, with one stipulation: make the piles grow bigger.
Under corporations law, Gunn is legally obligated to do everything in his power to make this happen. His personal feelings, his obligations to his employees, his understanding of what the closure of a major manufacturing plant in a small community will do must be subordinated to growing the shareholders' piles of money. If he can make these piles bigger by moving the factory to a country with weaker labour laws, lower wages and overall lower costs, he has to do this.
What is interesting about this particular closure is that almost everything needed to continue the production of shoes in Tasmania remains. The machinery will still be in the building. The tannery will still exist. The workers and their skills will, for the moment anyway, remain in Tasmania. The only thing missing will be the piles of money to keep it all running.
In Venezuela, where workers are transforming the old rule of faceless suits, things are very different. When the directors of the state-run oil company in Venezuela, PDVSA, chose to shut down in protest at attempts to get them to dedicate more of their piles of money to social programs, as requested by President Hugo Chavez's government, the workers, backed by the radical government, broke the lockout by running the company themselves.
Encouraged by the government, workers in a number of firms have responded to moves by their bosses to close down by occupying the firm and running it under their control.
There are solutions to factory closures, and the capitalists are unnecessary. We should follow the example of workers in Venezuela and demand that the bosses "open the books" so we can see exactly how much profit is being made from our labour and, on that basis, determine how else, and where, it could be used.
Cries of a "skills shortage" ring hollow when factories like Blundstone, which keep whole communities alive, are allowed to close down.