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9. Takeovers, Shareholders and the end of the
Family Firm
There
is an episode in the story of this wonderful old firm that I call to
mind: the launching of the firm as a limited company, with employees
getting the opportunity to own a little of their place of work. The result of this gesture by Mr Paul was that in later years
there were takeovers, first by Radiation and then Tube Investments.
Radiation had its factory on the old North Circular Road,
London; they had little
interest in past service or loyalty.
In fact the arrival of directors from this company at the
Church Lane factory was a portent of things to come.
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The old orders
changes. In 1970 - three hundred years after the
foundation of the company, every employee was given a
Sheaffer pen bearing the company's new logo, the letterheads
were reprinted in the new house style and the vans and
lorries were given a makeover - all in dark and light mauve! |
Even though Mr
Paul was still chairman it was obvious that he did not like the new
situation and his visits to the factory declined up to his
retirement; and the new regime put in other people of their own.
Some had an attitude of “We now own the factory and the people who
work there”. Employees of tens of years service did not take well
to this from new people who did not understand the attitude to new
and different changes.
After some few years, Gibbons people were
delighted when a more local firm of Tube Investments took over
Radiation; exposing them to the same feeling of a new ownership who
would make changes in management of them in turn. The
"Key" magazine had now gone to be replaced by the
"Tube Investment Magazine".
James Gibbons’ fortune declined.
On the second takeover, by Tube Investments, things started
to go down hill. Like many of the family owned firms it grew smaller in size
and importance.
The
call for cheaper builders’ furniture, with the call for greater
profits from share holders, lead to imports from abroad where wages
were low, and that word "redundancy" coming into the
workers’ vocabulary. Many
at Gibbons had heard the word and, soon after the departure of Mr
Paul Gibbons, many would experience the word.
A man was employed by the shareholders and board of
the new owners to slash the workforce. This man was termed the
"Axeman" by the workers.
From Manchester, he had no thought or knowledge of the people
that were now to get
the benefit of his commission.
Workers with decades of service held the view that they would
be safe because of their skills and long loyalty.
Not so. Without the decency of a prior warning or explanation
some members of the firm were dismissed on the Friday night as they
collected their wages and were handed their cards.
One man in
particular, the chargehand from the anodising department, who had
been at Gibbons since a boy, was one of these unfortunates. White faced and in complete state of shock, he stood against
the wall outside the main gate.
"They have sacked me I haven't done anything. What shall
I tell the wife? I
haven't done anything and I am sacked.
What shall I do, where shall I go?".
This
was witnessed by one or two people, some in the same boat and others
relieved that it was not yet their turn. The sight of that man’s
agony of mind, in shock and disbelief, has had the effect of
preparing some for the evil day or seeking other areas of
employment. They hated
this new system with its destruction of the confidence that, as long
as you behaved and gave a fair days work, your job would be safe, in
the workplace that your father had bought you up in.
This
was a new situation for family owned factories, with
factories being purchased for their assets and then the assets sold off without thought
of the consequences to the way of life of the work people; the sale
of sports and social clubs and their closure, followed by the
disposal of the sports grounds for building. This has been the norm for
the last two decades or so. The
pleasure and comradeship that these Sports and Social Clubs gave to
thousands has been lost and will never return.
But those who can remember the "Old Folks’ Christmas
Party" and the Awards for Service functions, when people were
proud to receive awards for long service from the boss of the family
of workers, will know
that such occasions did much to create long standing friendships
forged over the years. Soldiers
of a Regiment will remember their mates who served with them;
workers were no different in that regard in those earlier days
of working together, then playing together in the same football
works league team or net-ball team.
Again
the new people who did eventually arrive at Gibbons did their best
to destroy the history of the firm by supplanting it with their own,
which they thought was paramount. The history of Radiation and then
Tube Investments had very little interest for the Gibbons workforce.
So it followed that many of the contents of the display
cabinets, the exhibition units and medals for excellence, were lost
and or melted down. From
one end of the office landing to the other, display and wall
cabinets, dusty and old, showed the world what Gibbons was capable
of and what it had already achieved in industry and artwork. What a
disgraceful loss to Wolverhampton's history and heritage,
perpetrated by people from Manchester and London.
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