furniture: south, then east
WORKERS, MAY 2003 ISSUE
SOME 800 workers who produce beds and furniture are being made redundant as Silentnight relocate to the new neocolonies of Eastern Europe – Poland and Lithuania.
In 1985 over 500 workers in Barnoldswick, Lancashire, were sacked for seeking a pay rise. Subsequently Silentnight relocated their Lancashire production base to South Wales, Hampshire and Oxfordshire – the industrial North being replaced by the rural non-unionised South. Now the East beckons.