Deal hope in foreign workers row
Workers say the action is not racist, but about discrimination against Britons
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A possible deal to end the row over the use of foreign labour at Lincolnshire’s Lindsey Oil Refinery will be put to local union leaders and workers later.
The proposal emerged after talks chaired by Acas.
A GMB union source told the BBC the deal could see half of the disputed 200 jobs offered to British workers, but the Unite leader has denied this.
Workers are angry a sub-contractor is using only non-British labour, and similar protests spread around the UK.
Unemployed workers and contractors in refineries, power stations and nuclear plants have been taking part in protests since last week.
Union activists have said the issue had been simmering in the industry for years, with British workers being excluded from some jobs.
On Wednesday morning protesters again gathered at the Lindsey site, a week after the walkouts began.
The current row is centred on the North Lincolnshire plant, in North Killingholme, which is owned by French company Total.
A contract for work to expand the refinery was sub-contracted by Total’s main contractor – engineering firm Jacobs – to an Italian company, IREM, which decided to use its own foreign workforce.
Total insists it is not discriminating against British workers and that the decision to award the contract was fair.
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 Unfortunately, over the last day or two, we have heard a lot of talk about xenophobia  Labour MP Jon Cruddas
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But the protests at Lindsey spread across the UK, with workers at other sites holding unofficial “sympathy” walkouts.
On Tuesday, some 600 workers at Langage power station, near Plymouth, Devon, joined the strikes, as did up to 500 at Shell’s Stanlow refinery, in Cheshire.
Walkouts were also held at other sites including Drax Power Station, near Selby in North Yorkshire, Coryton oil refinery in Thurrock, Essex, and Longannet power station in Fife.
In the last week workers at more than 20 sites in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have taken part in the protests.
Jobs shared
Talks involving the main parties in the dispute began on Monday at a hotel near Grimsby.
On Tuesday night, Acas released a statement saying: “Conclusions are to be discussed with a large group of local trade union officials first thing tomorrow morning.
“This will be followed by a mass meeting of the workforce.”
Union sources told the BBC that the deal appeared to offer 50% of the disputed jobs to British workers. But the source added that “the devil will be in the detail”, which union officials are yet to see.
BBC political correspondent Norman Smith said that as the strikes were unofficial the ability of union leaders to get workers to accept a deal was “far from certain”.
He said there were also question marks about response of the Italian and Portuguese workers who could be forced to give up their jobs, and whether this would set a precedent.
‘Respect agreements’
On Tuesday crowds of demonstrators had gathered outside the Lindsey plant, where strike committee member Phil Whitehurst said he and his colleagues were convinced of their case.
“People have said it’s racist. It’s not. We’re not part of the BNP. I’ve shunned the BNP away from here,” he said.
“It’s about British workers getting access to a British construction site.”
Construction and maintenance workers around the UK have protested
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The CBI has backed the company at the centre of the dispute, while Business Secretary Lord Mandelson has said the country should focus on the economics of the recession, not on “the politics of xenophobia”.
But Labour backbencher Jon Cruddas criticised the language being used by the government and said people should focus on the need for employers to respect local employment agreements as well as national pay deals.
“Unfortunately, over the last day or two, we have heard a lot of talk about xenophobia,” he said.
“I am afraid that does not respect some of the issues that are at work here and that sort of language builds up the problem rather than acknowledges the nature of the problem.”
Derek Simpson, the joint leader of Unite, said the strike action was “not about race or immigration, it’s about class”.
“It’s about employers who exploit workers regardless of their nationality by undercutting their hard won pay and conditions,” he said.
Labour MP John Mann has put down a Commons early day motion “deploring” the use of foreign workers at the Lindsey refinery and praising unions for “exposing this exploitation and the absence of equal opportunities to apply for all jobs”.
sourced from The BBC
Hope that new ‘half-and-half’ deal in foreign workers row could end wildcat strikes
A proposed deal that could end the bitter row over foreign workers at an oil refinery will be put to unions today.
Marathon talks aimed at ending a series of wildcat strikes at Lindsey plant in Lincolnshire ended last night with the outline of a possible deal.
Union sources said it involved offering half the jobs of the disputed recruitment contract to UK workers.
Deal: Strikers at the Lindsey Oil Refinery in Lincolnshire have been promised that half half the jobs of the disputed recruitment contract will go to British workers
The conciliation service Acas chaired yesterday’s meeting between union officials, representatives of Total, which owns the refinery at the centre of the dispute, and the Italian sub-contractor which has hired its own workforce.
Unions claimed that British workers had been excluded from the contract with Irem, which has brought around 200 Italian and Portuguese workers to the UK.
Acas said last night: ‘Conclusions are to be discussed with a large group of local trade union officials first thing tomorrow morning.
‘This will be followed by a mass meeting of the workforce.’
National union leaders were waiting to see details of the formula, which is likely to be put to today’s mass meeting.
The development came after another day of copycat strikes at power stations and other sites across the country in the increasingly bitter dispute.
Hundreds of strikers held another protest at the Lindsey refinery and they are expected to return today.
Unofficial strike action at the plant sparked solidarity protests, with around 500 workers at Shell’s Stanlow Oil Refinery in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, and 250 at Hartlepool engineering company Heerema joining the national walkout for the first time yesterday.
Labour MP John Mann tabled a Commons early day motion ‘deploring’ the use of foreign workers at the Lindsey refinery, and congratulating unions for ‘exposing this exploitation and the absence of equal opportunities to apply for all jobs’.
Total has been urging workers to end the unofficial action at the refinery in North Killingholme as soon as possible, stressing that it had never discriminated against British companies or British workers.
sourced from The Daily Mail
Downturn will bring big fall in migrant workers, says CBI
Companies facing decline in demand for goods and services will reduce their use of agency staff, MPs are told
The use of migrant labour in Britain will decline abruptly as companies face a sharp fall in demand for their goods and services, the Confederation of British Industry told MPs yesterday. John Cridland, the CBI’s deputy director general, told the Commons home affairs committee that the first response of many firms to the downturn was to reduce their dependency on agency staff, many of whom are migrant workers.
He said that there was evidence that many nationals of new EU states were going home as unemployment rose in Britain and suggested that the flow of skilled migrants from outside Europe would also decline. He added: “I expect that, when we have the next report from the [Home Office's] migration advisory committee on the needs for skilled labour, we will not see the same need for non-EU labour in the same numbers because of the need to provide as many employment opportunities as possible for the unemployed. All I’m suggesting is that the market will correct itself, but what we cannot avoid is a significant increase in unemployment, which is a sad but inevitable consequence of recession.”
The remarks came after the issue of migrant workers taking British jobs erupted into a spate of wildcat strikes in sympathy with oil refinery staff in Lincolnshire who believe they have been unfairly excluded from jobs given to Italian workers.
The home affairs committee also heard evidence from NHS employers that a third of the 91,000 hospital doctors in Britain, but only 16% of the 33,000 GPs, came from outside Europe. While this proportion has changed little since the NHS was established in 1948, the number of overseas nurses working in the NHS has fallen in recent years: 14,000 nurses were recruited from overseas and 14,000 domestically in 2004, but by 2008 overseas recruits had fallen to 4,800, whereas those recruited in Britain remained at 14,000.
The MPs heard evidence from the social care sector and the farming industry, however, that they still needed to expand the use of migrant labour from outside Europe. Mandy Thorn, of the Social Care Association, said that about 12% of those who worked in social care came from outside Europe. She said that if there were new restrictions on the ability to recruit from abroad it would have a huge impact, with the Commission for Social Care Inspection estimating that the sector’s workforce would expand by between 50% and 80% by 2025.”What we are seeing is not just a skill shortage but a shortage in the supply of labour that is prepared to do what is an extremely difficult job,” said Thorn. “People are not prepared or not able to do the very personal, intimate care that is needed, and that is particularly where wages are lower than we would like to pay.”
The Commons inquiry into the operation of the new points-based immigration system also heard representations from the farming industry about its dependence on migrant labour. Paul Temple, of the National Farmers’ Union, said the temporary nature of the work and the fact that many unemployed people in Britain were in “the wrong place with the wrong skills” deterred them from taking the jobs. The MPs heard evidence that jobless workers in Britain had higher expectations about the work they should be doing.
The evidence about the impact of possible new restrictions on migrant workers coming to Britain follows a warning from the Institute of Public Policy Research earlier this week that measures to curb other Europeans working in Britain could jeopardise the position of an estimated one million to one and half million Britons who are already working in other EU countries.
Asked by Labour MPs on the committee whether the CBI supported the EU’s posted workers directive, which lies at the heart of the current strikes against migrant workers, Cridland said that while he sympathised with the workers, as far as he was aware, the companies involved were acting lawfully and there was no evidence of discrimination against British workers.
He said that there was a long-running union campaign to amend the posted workers directive to overturn two technical rulings about its operation. He said that they amounted to whether or not collective bargaining arrangements covered the workers concerned, and that was dependent on how the directive was operated in a particular EU member state. The CBI saw no need to amend the directive.
The Labour MP for Walsall, David Winnick, described as “apologists” those who argued that British workers could move to other European states for work and asked: “What use is that to somebody with a family and a mortgage?”.
Cridland replied that it was particularly important at a time of rising unemployment to improve the skill levels of British workers to ensure they could take advantage of the vacancies that did exist.
sourced from The Guardian
Wildcat strikes: Deal to be put to the vote
UK workers will get half of the jobs at oil refinery
A deal to break the deadlock in an unofficial strike over foreign workers is expected to be put to a vote today.
After lengthy talks, bosses are believed to have agreed that half the 200 jobs allocated by contract to Italian and Portuguese staff should go to UK workers.
An ACAS spokesman involved in the negotiations with Total at the Lindsey oil refinery in North Lincolnshire said the proposal was likely to be put to a mass meeting.
The move comes after union chiefs said they had prevented the British National Party and other right-wing groups from turning the dispute into an immigration issue.
Derek Simpson, joint leader of the union Unite, said: “This unofficial action is not about race. It’s about class – and employers who exploit workers regardless of their nationality.”
Meanwhile it was revealed that a British supply ship that has served the Falklands for 26 years is losing its £40million MoD contract – to a Dutch ship crewed by cheap-labour Filipinos.
Union chiefs slammed the decision to axe the Glasgowowned Saint Brandan as “costcutting madness”.
sourced from The Daily Mirror
