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A champagne moment at Capstone Publishers

Members at Capstone Global Library in north Oxford had cause to celebrate after a company climbdown on jobs, following backup from NUJ colleagues.

Capstone Publishers bought the Harcourt Global Library business (Heinemann-Raintree) from Pearson last September, and shares the same north Oxford site as Pearson Education.
The company had earmarked a post for redundancy, to be selected from a small pool of editorial staff, indicating early on that the selection process would be halted were someone from the pool to put in for voluntary redundancy and have that request approved.
One member did put in for voluntary redundancy, but her request was denied. This left the others, who wished to continue working for the company, waiting anxiously to hear their fate in a series of individual meetings with management and HR.
Following advice from the union and a hastily convened meeting with members of the Pearson Education Oxford NUJ committee, they agreed they would attend with a rep and would argue their case, reserving the right to end the meeting in order to get legal advice if the company refused to listen to them.
This is exactly what they did, and faced with a reasonable alternative articulated by a resolute and organised group of staff backed by the union, the company accepted the original request for voluntary redundancy. Result! One member happy to leave with a redundancy deal; the others able to stay doing the job they enjoy.
“We could never have done it without your excellent advice,” said one of the members to the Pearson chapel committee. “I would definitely have become a hysterical, rude, blathering idiot, instead of which – with your guidance – I remained icy cool and deadly deliberate... It was a champagne moment.”
“It’s a shame we all had to be put through this unnecessary stress,” said another. “The solution was open all the time, but we were made to jump through all these hoops to end up doing the job we had been doing all along.”
Capstone members are currently discussing the possibility of setting up a formal chapel and requesting recognition.

Capstone Publishers is a family-owned, US-based company specialising in educational resources. Its purchase of the former Harcourt Global Library business last year was broadly welcomed by staff, who had endured years of uncertainty as first Reed Elsevier and, subsequently, Pearson tried to find a suitable buyer – “It’s nice to be bought by somebody who actually wants us.”