The Trouble With Woolworth's pt.4

In our series of articles examining the downfall of retailer Woolworth's we have seen how this event was really just a sideshow in the ongoing war between the giant supermarket chains.

So do the soon to be ex-workers of Woolworth's have any alternative but to join the dole queue and hope to pick up jobs should those who have placed them in this sitution(the likes of Tesco, Sainsbury, and Asda) deem it profitable to re-open their old workplace as a convenience store? It's a pretty bleak prospect with the commercial pressures of Christmas mounting, the mainstream media driving home the message that 'the age of austerity' is dawning and a government once more attacking the poorest in society precisely when they need most help.

Well while it might not feel like a time to party, I would argue that is exactly what they should do. The first concern of administrator Deloitte will be to divest the Woolworth's carcass of it's prime cuts, selling off the portfolio of prime high street retail space to secure as much cash for the creditors and shareholders as possible. The last thing on their agenda will be the welfare of the 30,000 staff. This makes those stores the key in resisting the assault on these people's livelihoods.

Sit-ins have proven their worth time and again as a powerful tool of resistance providing a rallying point for wider discontent. The Woolworth's staff have the opportunity to occupy their stores, refusing to leave unless the workers of every store are guaranteed work by the buyers. This would deny the supermarket giants who have cost them their jobs the luxury of picking and choosing the most lucrative leases, while leaving many redundant.

Furthermore by using these spaces to organise solidarity christmas parties, open to those at the sharp end of the recession, they could challenge the logic of the 'age of austerity'. Rather than accepting the idea that workers must bear the cost of the ruling elite's crisis and compete to be the most frugal, they could pinch a few turkeys and mince pies from Tesco, barricade the doors and start creating a festival of resistance.