SeaFrance is set to be resurrected as a worker-run co-operative, creating up to 500 new jobs.
British holidaymakers and those with second homes who take their car to France will soon be able to choose the co-operative option. SeaFrance, the Dover-Calais ferry operator which went into liquidation in January, looks set to be resurrected this summer as a worker-run co-operative.
The new business, constituted under French law as a SCOP (société coopérative et participative), will give work to 500 of SeaFrance's former workforce in an area of France where unemployment is high. The plans have been developed by the workers' trade union, Maritime Nord, which first proposed a co-operative last year as SeaFrance's future became increasingly uncertain.
SeaFrance's employees who are re-employed by the co-op will be asked each to contribute 5,000 euros as their share of the enterprise. The first co-op employees began work at the end of last month.
The failure of SeaFrance, previously part of the French state-run SNCF railways, was a blow to the suffering Calais economy, where two of the ships have since been lying mothballed in the harbour. Nevertheless, the plan to establish the co-operative has been controversial.
It was possible only with the involvement of Eurotunnel, which acquired three of SeaFrance's fleet of four ships for what many regard as the bargain price of ?65m. The ships will now be leased to the co-operative. Eurotunnel's move adroitly removes a rival bid from DFDS to run the ferries, which could have provided unwelcome competition to the Channel Tunnel. Eurotunnel argues that a reborn SeaFrance can complement its Channel Tunnel business, for example by ferrying lorries with dangerous cargos.
The trade union behind the co-operative has also come in for criticism from the national French union federation CFDT, to which it had been affiliated. The CFDT expelled Maritime Nord in March this year, partly on the grounds that it had not been prepared to consider other options for SeaFrance's future. Accusations of fraudulent practices were also made.
However, former French president Nicholas Sarkozy lent his weight to the co-operative buyout when he instructed SNCF in January to invest in the venture. SNCF will contribute ?25,000 for each of its former employees taken on by the co-op.
France has about 21,000 co-operative businesses with about a million employees between them. As in Britain, the workers' co-operative is a relatively small part of the overall co-operative sector. There are about 2,000 registered SCOPs, employing only about 40,000 people.
The move to rescue SeaFrance recalls the successful co-operative takeover in Wales of the Tower Colliery, north of Aberdare in 1995, following the closure of the pit by British Coal a year earlier. The co-operative, led the local NUM branch secretary, provided work for more than 200 miners who each contributed £8,000 from their redundancy payments and demonstrated that a business dismissed as unviable could be turned round.
However there have also been less happy examples where workers' co-operatives have tried to revive bankrupt businesses. Several so-called 'phoenix' co-operatives in the 1970s, including those established at Scottish Daily News and Triumph Meriden with support from the then cabinet minister Tony Benn, proved unsuccessful.
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