(June 19, 2009) — Hundreds of workers across England and Wales walked out today in support of nearly 650 construction contractors sacked from the Lindsey oil refinery.
The French oil giant Total confirmed it had written to 647 workers on a £200m project at the site, near Immingham, Lincolnshire, saying they had been sacked and had until Monday to reapply for their jobs.
Union leaders condemned the move – which was initially thought to affect as many as 900 staff – and warned the dispute was spreading as workers took sympathy action at up to 17 other power stations as well as construction sites across the UK.
Total said striking Total workers were taking part in an "unofficial, illegal walk-out" and urged workers to reapply for their jobs.
The GMB union general secretary, Paul Kenny, said: "Total has for a full week refused to meet with the unions to resolve this matter through [the industrial conciliation service] Acas. It seems pretty obvious that victimisation is taking place. Laying off the workforce will not solve the problem, it will escalate it."
Activists from Lindsey travelled to sites across the UK today to urge other workers to join the dispute.
"The Scottish lads have gone to Scotland and the Liverpool lads have gone to Liverpool," said Tony Walters, a 63-year-old plater from Lindsey who was one of about 200 workers who had been picketing outside the Eggborough power station in Yorkshire since this morning. "There are people gone everywhere … to picket and ask people to come out."
Activists were also circulating text messages urging other workers to join the dispute. "Cometh the hour, cometh the man," read one sent to hundreds of workers. "If you are supporting our brothers across the country thank you. If you’re not yet out just remember next time it could be you. We must fight this NOW."
Shop stewards said workers at Fiddlers Ferry in Cheshire, Ratcliffe and Staythorpe in Nottinghamshire, Didcot in Oxfordshire, Aberthaw and South Hook in South Wales, the BP refinery near Hull, and Drax, Ferrybridge and Eggborough in Yorkshire had come out in support of the action.
"We’ve come to get the support of the lads on Eggborough," said Lionel Cheadle, a mechanical fitter for 37 years who was given a redundancy warning at Lindsey last week. "The management have gone back on all the agreements we made when there was the row about the foreign workers in January. They gave us a guarantee that there’d be no redundancies while there were still Italians and Portuguese workers on the site. But now we’ve 51 of us going and the Italians and Portuguese are still there."
The sackings at Lindsey were announced last night as unofficial strike action over 51 job losses on a project to build a hydro desulphurisation plant was about to enter its eighth consecutive day.
The same workers were at the centre of a wave of wildcat action which swept the country in February over the issue of migrant workers taking jobs on UK construction projects in the energy sector.
The two sides had been involved in talks at a local level throughout the day although attempts by the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service to kick-start official negotiations appeared to have failed.
Outside the Lindsey site families turned up to support the strikers who have lost a week’s earnings, in some cases over £500. Christine Moylett, whose 47-year-old husband Kevin is a plater on the £200m desulphurisation plant project, said: "It makes me feel close to tears, not just wondering where the money’s going to come from, but thinking how little they seem to value the training of men like Kevin. He’s been in the trade since he was 16, and they taught him really well, as an apprentice and at night school."
Union activists welcomed the talks but warned that unless the company backed down the strikes would spread.
Kenny Ward, a shop steward at Lindsey who helped to lead the February protests, said: "We’ve been trying long and hard for eight days to get Total and the employers to come to the negotiating table … We’ve always been up for negotiation and that doesn’t stop now."
But he said feelings among his colleagues were running high: "For me and for 900 people here the gloves are off. I’ve never walked away from a fight in my life. Total have to realise what they’ve unleashed."
Wildcat Strikes Will Go Nuclear
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/19/lindsey-oil-refinery-strikes
Total’s contractors at the Lindsey oil refinery have pressed the big red button with mass sackings. Expect more trouble ahead
Guardian (Uk)
June 19, 2009
By Gregor Gall
It’s the dispute that won’t go away. For the third time this year, thousands of engineering construction workers have gone on unofficial strike, fighting for the right to work. This time the dispute has escalated dramatically unlike before, with the sacking of about 900 workers by the main contractor for Total, which operates the Lindsey refinery in Lincolnshire.
A week ago, about 1,200 contractor workers at the refinery staged an unofficial strike after a contractor gave notice of redundancies to 51 workers while another contractor on the same site was looking for 60 workers to fill vacancies.
The strikers said an agreement that settled their earlier strike in February meant that vacant work had to be made available to those under threat from redundancy. The contractors and Total said this was not the case.
The issue of the right to work, and the engineering construction workers’ willingness to fight for this, was again brought to the fore last month as a strike at Milford Haven started to snowball across other sites in Britain.
Since the outbreak of the strike last week, a growing number of engineering construction workers have taken solidarity action in support of their colleagues at the Lindsey refinery. By yesterday, the roll call of support numbered 13 sites, including power stations, chemicals plant and other refineries, and involving thousands of workers. The solidarity action was spread by flying pickets from Lindsey and, using mobile phones, the networks between different sites established in the previous strikes.
The current dispute has two dimensions. One is that the workers concerned are capable and willing, unlike many other workers (unionised or not), to take robust collective action to defend their right to work in the midst of a recession. This comes down not just to being unionised but being well organised at the workplace level with shop stewards, mass meetings and a collective confidence to act. Underlying this is the nature of the labour market in the industry where job security is absent with building projects beginning and ending when completed, with employment contracts based on this.
The second is that the employers are militant and hardnosed. During the first strike in January and February, Total and its contractor said they would not negotiate with the unions unless the workers went back to work. Shortly after they relented, and a deal was struck before the workers’ returned to work. This time the nuclear button has been pressed with the sackings:
reapply for your job by Monday next week on the condition of ending the strike or consider that you’ve dismissed yourself. The nuclear option has been backed up by refusing to allow the conciliation service Acas to get involved to resolve the dispute.
It is difficult not to read this as the employers wanting to take on, face down and defeat an assertive workforce once and for all. The reasons for this? The managerial prerogative – the right of management to manage as they see fit – is an obvious one. But behind this is surely the pressure to pursue profitability in a deteriorating economic environment. Common to all three disputes has been the keenness of the employers to undermine the national agreement for the industry that sets wage rates. In the first two disputes, the spark was the use of non-domiciled workers to do this. Now, it’s the more old-fashioned tool of aggressive management threatening job security to kowtow the workers’ demands.
But if the strikers at Lindsey remain solidly on strike and supported by an even greater number of sympathy strikes around the country, the political pressure on Total and its contractor will grow to make them climb down.
However, if the industry is going to be able to avoid another subsequent dogfight over the right to work then big changes are needed. The first is an explicit and binding industry agreement that is not only watertight on this issue of job security but also has an independent body to monitor and enforce it. Another is that the EU Posted Workers’ Directive is revised so that employers are not allowed to legally bring in workers from outside to undermine the wages and conditions of those already working. My money’s on further trouble ahead.
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