by Cary Gee
Talks to resolve the increasingly bitter dispute between the owners of Lindsey oil refinery and workers sacked from the plant were due to restart as Tribune went to press.
Earlier, a meeting to discuss the dispute had been scheduled to take place on Monday evening, between Total, the owners of the plant, conciliation service ACAS and the GMB, but union negotiators were left waiting for four hours by Total before the employer called the meeting off.
Up to 4,000 contract workers employed across the country have staged “wildcat” industrial action in support of 650 workers sacked from the Lindsey refinery, as plant bosses failed to meet the unions or to offer any reassurances about their former employees future employment.
Unions have demanded that the sacked employees be reinstated. They are also asking for a guarantee that employees who have demonstrated their support for former colleagues by taking action will not be victimised in the future.
Although some workers have been photographed holding placards calling for “British jobs for British Workers”, a GMB spokesman insisted: “This is a dispute about jobs and pay. It is not about foreign workers.”
In fact, the GMB says it has received a large number of messages of support “from trade unionists across Europe”.
The union spokesman added: “The stance we are taking has the full support of our members who employ us to do a job for them.”
Unofficial industrial action has spread from Lindsey in Lincolnshire as far South as Tilbury and Coryton in Essex, with workers using text messaging and email to organise and to demonstrate their support.
“We are happy to talk with Total wherever, whenever they like”, said the GMB. However, Total has so far refused to acknowledge even the basis for industrial action, claiming that as the sacked workers were all “contracted” no “employees” have actually lost their jobs.
Fears that the dispute might harm Britain’s energy production have not yet been realised. However, with wildcat action spreading to refineries in Ellsmere Port as well as a Nottinghamshire plant owned by E:ON UK and Drax, the county’s largest power station in Yorkshire, pressure is increasing for Total to renew negotiations
