“GOODBYE Goodyear are going to pull out of Craigavon.…”
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Free Citizen1970Housing, rents and local campaignsHousing, rents and local campaigns
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GOODBYE Goodyear are going to pull out of Craigavon. The American rubber giant has had enough. They want to abandon their £6,500, 000 factory built for them with taxpayers’ money by Brian Faulkner and William Craig. Their management is already making preparations to kiss Faulkner's folly - the new city of Craigavon - goodbye. They have no other choice.
Since opening in October 1967 they have faced problems that are not only enormous but insoluble. In the last three years they have lost just over £3 million. Their capital grants from Faulkner's Ministry of Development expire at the end of a five year period and then they will be, financially speaking, on their own. They can't leave immediately, as they would like to do, because if they scuttled the project before the expiry of the five-year period they would be obliged to hand back every penny of the taxpayers' money. So they must hang on reluctantly until 1972:
But then what? How long will the U.S. capitalists behind the Goodyear project continue to pour their own money (as distinct from your money) into what is clearly a lost cause? In fact to continue supportworthy and solvent Goodyear MUST pull out.
The manpower situation at Goodyear is a second major factor in their coming decision. They employ 1,500 men, yet out of this vast force they have a huge monthly turnover of 125 shop-floor workers. In other words every single job in Goodyear, on average, becomes vacant once a year. A 100% turnover every twelve months. Almost an entire shop-floor to be trained every year. This colossal wastage is due to the squalid wages Goodyear pay, the sweated labour conditions in their notorious ''Bambury" department, plus the ludicrously high rent charges in the new housing estates of Moylinn and Meadowbrook (up to £6. 5s. Od. per week!). Even Goodyear consider these rents exorbitant and are at loggerheads with the Craigavon Commissioners the working class most. Power to the people, not the state!
over them. But still the wastage goes on.
The most discouraging symptom of the Goodyear disease is that it is spreading. Not a single new major American industrialist has been attracted to the area since Goodyear began ailing. The reason is simply that Goodyear have warned them all off. It's a case of once bitten.
To save face Goodyear will be forced for a time to deny that they are going. Political pressure will be brought on them to repudiate this intention. But going they are.
Craigavon, wonder city of Unionism and Faulkner's gateway to the ‘70's, has had it.
northern star 2 THE NEW NORTHERN STAR IS NOW OUT COPIES FROM: 88 LADYBROOK PARK BELFAST. 2/-d. POST FREE.
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FREE CITIZEN 6th NOVEMBER 1970