As has already been reported on marxist.com and socialist.net, the workers at the PRISME packaging plant in Dundee have been in occupation since the 4th of March. The workers decided to occupy the factory after they were each given a letter informing them of their immediate dismissal without any of the pay they were owed from the first of March. They demanded a letter outlining the payments they were due, which when the received outlined all they payments they were entitled to, however it scandalously concluded with the sentence “Unfortunately, we do not have enough money to make these payments to you.” The workers took the decision then that they were not going to follow the route the letter suggested in contacting the Citizens’ Advice Bureau but that they were instead going to occupy the factory with the demand that they received the payments owed to them.

On Friday the 13th of March two comrades from Edinburgh went to visit the occupiers to offer our support to their struggle. We spoke to Maureen and Lorraine who had worked at the factory for 13 and 14 years respectively. They both told us of the widespread support they’d received from as far afield as Australia, but they were yet to receive any support from the Labour Party, although they had been visited from the SNP MSP for the area. Once again it seems that the Labour Party has failed to support the workers in their struggle. Maureen and Lorraine also informed us that the workers were considering running the factory under a workers’ co-op. They had all the skills to operate the machines such as the box-making machine, the gluing machine and the pattern machine; there is still demand for PRISME packaging as after the workers called round the companies they’d supplied in the past they’d been told that the companies would be still be happy to work with PRISME packaging. Yet again proving in practice that workers don’t need bosses!

Maureen and Lorraine had also been involved in the TIMEX factory pickets in 1993 when the TIMEX factory in Dundee was closed leaving many workers jobless. The workers in the PRISME factory had been subject to terrible pay and limited holidays with a minimum wage salary and very little holiday days - just a couple of days at Christmas/New Year, two weeks in the summer and little else. None of the workers involved in the occupation are in trade unions and Maureen said that they “weren’t militants, just little people”.  Yet no one is born a militant and under current conditions little people in workplaces everywhere are being turned into militants.