Refinery workers voting on job deal

Feb 5 2009

A deal to end the bitter row over foreign workers at an oil refinery is expected to be accepted in a vote by hundreds of strikers, but the row over access to contracts by UK employees is continuing to rage.

Workers who have been on unofficial strike for more than a week at the Lindsey refinery, in North Lincolnshire, will be urged to accept a peace deal under which UK employees will be offered more than 100 jobs out of 198 posts on the contract awarded to an Italian company.

But in a separate dispute, unemployed construction workers who claim they are being refused work at a Nottinghamshire power station will stage a protest outside the London headquarters of Alstom, the company at the centre of the row.

The demonstrators will press Alstom to ensure its sub-contractors, Montpressa and FMM, open up their contracts at the Staythorpe power station, near Newark, to UK workers.

Unite said 600 jobs will be needed to build the power station's turbine and boiler, while a further 250 workers will be required to build the pipe connecting the two, but the union expressed "serious concerns" that none of these jobs will go to UK workers.

Joint general secretary Derek Simpson said: "Our members are not asking for special favours - they are demanding fair play. The UK needs to upgrade and build new power stations and there are huge opportunities to create thousands of well paid and highly skilled jobs. It will be a disgrace if UK workers are not even allowed to apply for jobs to build British power stations.

"Alstom has the power to insist that the sub-contractors end this scandalous situation. UK workers must be given a fair chance to get a cut of the action to build a new generation of UK power stations."

The dispute is similar to the bitter row at the Lincolnshire oil refinery, which led the Government to set up talks between unions, employers and the conciliation service Acas.

Mr Simpson said he hoped the peace deal would be accepted by workers at a mass meeting. He said no Italian workers would lose their job as a result of the deal, although he added that the dispute was part of a "wider problem" which he warned would not go away even if the current row was resolved.

"The Government is beginning to grasp the fundamental issues. The problem is not workers from other European countries working in the UK, nor is it about foreign contractors winning contracts in the UK. The problem is that employers are excluding UK workers from even applying for work on these contracts."