There is mounting concern electricity supplies could be threatened if strike action in protest at the sacking of hundreds of energy workers escalates.
Almost 650 contract staff at the Lindsey oil refinery in North Lincolnshire have received letters saying they have until Monday afternoon to reapply for their jobs.
The dismissals sparked a wave of sympathy strikes at power stations and other sites, with some activists warning power workers could soon join the walkouts, jeopardising electricity supplies.
Meanwhile, the fallout continues over a planned Acas conciliation service meeting which did not go ahead.
Downing Street announced the talks were due to take place between unions and managers at the oil refinery, owned by French energy giant Total.
But Acas later revealed it did not happen, and issued a statement saying: “After discussions between Total management and their contractors, they decided not to go ahead with the talks. We remain in touch with the parties.”
Union sources said their officials waited for four hours before being told Total “no longer felt the need” to have a meeting.
GMB leader Paul Kenny said it was an “outrage and a disgrace”, adding: “GMB and others were asked by Total to attend talks early this morning and our people travelled from across the country for the meeting.
“Total has not even had the decency or courtesy to turn up at the meeting that they themselves arranged. Total is totally without integrity. Bullying and intimidation is not the way to bring about peace.”
Wildcat strikes have spread to several power stations and other terminals in recent days, as thousands of workers took sympathy action.
Workers who joined the wildcat action included those at the Staythorpe power station in Nottinghamshire, Ferrybridge power station in Yorkshire, Stanlow oil refinery in Cheshire and around 1,100 construction workers building a bio-fuel plant on Teesside.
Blackout threat rises as refinery row spreads
Some of Britain’s biggest power stations could be forced into unscheduled shutdowns if industrial action over sackings at the Lindsey oil refinery escalates.
Hundreds of contractors at Drax in West Yorkshire and E.ON UK’s plant at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire have walked out in sympathy after Total, owner of the Lindsey oil refinery, last night sacked 900 workers for staging a series of “illegal” strikes.
Officials said that the wildcat strikes have not affected power generation activities so far. But sources said there was a risk that if the strikes became official, other staff at heavily unionised plants would refuse to cross picket lines. It could lead to plants being closed or forced to operate at a reduced capacity.
A spokesman for Drax, Britain’s largest power station, where up to 200 contractors have not shown up for work today, declined to comment on the potential impact of escalating disruption.
Widcat Protest Video
SAVE OUR JOBS – Strike on Tuesday 24th
With public anger over the theft of our jobs growing by the day, a national wildcat builders’ strike has been called for Tuesday 24th February.
While the British Wildcats don’t know who called the strike, we certainly support its aims. Others who do likewise should pass on the text message that is going round the country like wildfire:
“A national strike has been called on tuesday 24 feb in protest over how we are being ignored. We call on all sites across the country to down tools and walk. This concerns the whole country or we’ll soon have nowhere to work!
Next Tuesday the 24th February, after the usual protest outside of the Staythorpe site, a march and rally will be held in Newark the details are as follows.
Assemble at Great North Road lorry park at 10.30 a.m. turn right at the A46 roundabout toward Newark Centre and enter slip road on the left. We need to build for as big a turnout as possible.
If you cannot make it to the Protest march we urge everyone to gather outside of TOTAL fuel stations and protest at the way they have treat their workers. Every TOTAL fuel station should be picketed please arrange to be at your local forecourt as early as possible.
The L O R Committee.
Please pass on.”
The Lesson of Lindsey
ACAS has now ruled that neither Total nor IREM broke any laws in the way they employed Italian and Portuguese workers at the Lindsey oil refinery. For those who want to read the full report, this can be found here:
http://www.acas.org.uk/CHttpHandler.ashx?id=1019&p=0
ACAS say there is no evidence of “any unlawful recruitment practices”. But that, of course, is the problem! The fact that British workers can lawfully be excluded from even applying for jobs in this country goes to the heart of what’s wrong.
We accept that if there are skills or labour shortages then it is reasonable for an employer to bring in workers from abroad. But British workers should always be given the chance to apply for jobs in this country. The fact that IREM were able to stipulate that they would only employ foreign workers is simply not fair.
To be honest we never thought that Total or IREM, with all their sharp-suited lawyers, would be dumb enough to break the law. The problem is that the law is unacceptable. The lesson of Lindsey is therefore that the only solution to this problem is political.
The Posted Workers Directive (used by IREM), like 80% of all our laws, was written in Brussels. Westminster is nothing but a hot-air talking shop which rubber-stamps foreign laws and imposes them on us. We need a political solution that involves:
i. Leaving the EU. Let’s gain our independence and freedom to make our own laws. Yes, we can – and should – have agreements with other European countries so that we can travel and work abroad, but these agreements should be designed so that they are fair to ALL concerned. The EU’s laws are a ‘bosses charter’; it’s time to put the people first!
ii. Rejecting globalisation. A British government should be seeking to improve the living standards and quality of life of the British people, but the current obsession with globalisation is instead a race to the bottom. The only way we can compete with countries where workers are paid a pound a day is to reduce our own wages and conditions. Competition can be a good thing, but only when it’s between countries with the same wage levels and standards of living. Globalisation only benefits the multi-national companies that can move their production to wherever they can pay their workers the least.
This is not a political website so who you vote for is up to you, but just make sure that they really mean it when they say ‘British Jobs for British Workers’!
PEOPLE POWER – A First Hand Account
Andrew Spence was one of the leaders of the 2001 Fuel Protest. Mr. Spence is a farmer and haulier who lives and works in County Durham. As leader of a number of ‘rolling roadblocks’ on motorways and the blockade of the giant Jarrow refinery, Mr. Spence became a national hero during the Fuel Protest, which came close to toppling the Blair regime. This is part of an interview he later did with a sympathetic news outlet.
Interviewer: The 2001 Fuel Protest gave the Labour government an enormous fright and sparked copycat actions which ground several European countries to a halt as well. When and how did you get involved in it?
AS: Right from the very start. I was sitting in the Jolly Drovers in Leadgate with two mates, complaining as always about the crippling price of fuel. I had fourteen wagons on the road at the time. “Why don’t you do something about it then?” I was asked. I’m naturally quite shy at heart, but things were so desperate that I decided that I would. There was a Hunt meeting next door so I went straight round. All the fieldsports people were angry about the threatened hunting ban as well so they were immediately responsive. “How many people here are fed up with the cost of fuel?” I asked, and everyone put their hands up. So we decided there and then to do something about it.
Interviewer: How did you work out where to start?
AS: TransAction had tried rolling blockades on the motorways in the mid-eighties, but had been bought off. We decided to adopt their tactics. We announced that a convoy of wagons and farm vehicles would take a slow drive around the centre of Newcastle the Saturday before the Budget. The Monday before we had a meeting and only five people turned up, but we decided to go on with the protest anyway. We gave the story to the media and kept our fingers crossed as we drove to meet up at Birtley Truck Stop on the A1 near the Angel of the North. We couldn’t even get in! The place was overflowing with more than 300 trucks, tractors and taxis, and TV news helicopters were buzzing overhead. Apart from several fully loaded muckspreaders which the police turned back and everyone got through; we set off and our seven mile long convoy caused chaos! I was threatened with arrest, but we hit the national headlines. Would-be protesters started calling from all over the country and we realised that this could be big.
Interviewer: So how did you build a national network?
AS: I was called by a group of farmers in Monmouthshire who wanted to protest about fuel prices and the fact that the supermarkets and big dairies were making them sell their milk at less than the cost of production. Contacts from other parts of the country came as well and we held a meeting of just over a dozen would-be protest leaders and formed Farmers for Action.
As Gordon Brown hadn’t put up fuel duty in the Budget after the Newcastle demo we decided to hit the supermarkets next. Near the end of 2000 a group of thirty of us turned up late one night and blockaded the First Co-op Dairy in Blaydon. We were there for four hours in heavy rain, but by the end of the night word had got around and there were more than a hundred of us. The Co-op were so concerned that they rousted the Chief Executive out of bed in Leeds and he drove up to see us. We left the minute he arrived, having wrecked their schedules and made our point.
We knew that the protest would get publicity and that others would follow our example. The Co-op knew that too and tried to blackmail their milk suppliers into staying away. So we took sheep and beef farmers instead. Then we found out that they were bringing in sub-standard, untested, French milk to mix with ours, so we extended the protests to milk processors and then supermarket Distribution Centres. A typical Regional DC sends out fifty trucks an hour so even small and short pickets caused them major headaches. This gave other farmers confidence and the protests spread.
Interviewer: Who were the main players and how did you come to switch back to the fuel issue?
AS: Martin Falkingham from Yorkshire, David Handley and Brynley Williams from Wales, Paul Ashley from Cheshire and Maurice Vellacott from Devon were just some of the local leaders I soon got to know. Then Brynley Williams held a protest meeting in a cattle market in Wales and one of the farmers there suggested going to the Stanlow oil refinery. To start with just four tractors and fifteen farmers turned up, but then GMTV ran the story and over 1,000 joined them. The tanker drivers refused even to try to cross the picket lines and the story got even bigger.
Interviewer: So a lot of the success was media-driven?
AS: Absolutely. Media coverage and mobile phones were really what did it. I had three mobiles and they were all going virtually all the time. It was an irresistable story, and from the sympathy we got from the news crews it seemed as though they too wanted to see our little group take the Government down a peg or two. We already had a road blockade planned for that Sunday – cutting off all the main roads between England and Scotland. I went up there but then heard that the lads at Stanlow were coming under increasing pressure from the police and were getting jittery being the only ones blockading a refinery. So I passed the word around at the Alnwick demo, grabbed two friends and we drove by car to Jarrow refinery. By this time we were being followed everywhere by the police, but I just parked the car across the main gate and declared the refinery closed! Several police cars pulled in behind me and they started to argue, but then the next cars arrived and blocked them in too. The the wagons and tractors started turning up, along with the news cameras again. With Stanlow and Jarrow shut down, protesters were soon camped outside every refinery in mainland Britain.
Interviewer: How aware were you of public sympathy?
AS: It was overwhelming. The sight of a group of independent middle class businessmen taking on the Blair regime was proper David and Goliath stuff. Chris Bacon had a removal van with us at Jarrow and by the end of the week it was virtually full of supplies that people just turned up and handed over. We had hampers, crates of whisky, the takeaways all sent food each night. Then a lady brought us a caravan so we could take it in turns to sit and get warm. A local firm donated us a Portaloo. Nationally, one opinion poll found we had the support of 97% of the population, even though lengthening fuel queues were causing them real hardship. They blamed Blair and Brown.
Interviewer: What did the Government do to fight back?
AS: They seemed paralysed until Monday afternoon, but then they got organised and things started to get rough. Police officers who had been friendly suddenly switched to hostility. The Government refused to negotiate, but got dirty behind the scenes.
We all started getting death threats to our families, and the police said there was nothing they could do to help. The calls to mine were traced back (I can’t say how) to Catterick Garrison. The next day the Health Minister claimed that “people are dying” because ambulances couldn’t get fuel. This was a lie because we were in daily contact with the emergency services and let tankers out to keep them supplied whenever we were asked. Now the police turned up in riot gear and kept trying to provoke trouble. On the Wednesday the police used force to break up a small blockade at the Sunderland refinery. I drove down and was arrested for obstruction (I was crossing the road!) There was so much riot gear in the van that they could hardly get me in. I was taken to Sunderland police station, thrown in a cell and threatened and intimidated. But after a while I could hear the horns from several hundred vehicles blockading the police station. I was charged and released on bail (a sympathetic judge later bound me over for six months).
I went straight back to Jarrow, and was carried aloft to a flatback to speak to 700-800 protesters. But I was mentally and physically exhausted (we’d none of us had more than a few hours sleep since Sunday) and I broke down. I had my wife crying on the phone and hadn’t seen my young children for days. I just had to go home.
Interviewer: By the Wednesday the fuel protests were threatening food supplies, and there were reports of angry clashes between motorists – especially in ethnically mixed areas. The country was at a virtual standstill and just a couple of days off serious breakdown. Why did the blockades crumble just as they were really biting?
AS: The media realised this wasn’t just a matter of running a good story any more and started to attack us instead of the Government. They’d built it up, now they knocked it down. The police were clearly spoiling for a fight and we were told/threatened that SAS men were being drafted in to arrest ‘ring-leaders’ and kick off trouble. Our families were being threatened all the time, our livelihoods were under threat from pressure from our banks, and we were shattered. Plus, we weren’t sure we wanted to reduce the country to anarchy. Then there were the black propaganda rumours that one place or another had ‘cracked’ and jacked it in.
I promised my wife I wouldn’t go back, but the phone rang all night. The protesters had left Stanlow on the Wednesday – the police there had played a clever game and had refused to talk to anyone except Brynley, on behalf of the farmers only. He called his boys off (we’ve never forgiven him for that, especially when he was rewarded by being given a safe seat as a Tory Welsh Assembly member) and the morale of the truckers and the public protesters there collapsed.
The lads at Jarrow were nervous that the police were about to start a riot, but they refused to leave unless I told them to in person. So my wife told me to go back. There was a real Dunkirk spirit about the blockade. A mate and I walked down the road to the refinery gates with the world’s media, truckers, farmers and the public lining the way and applauding. What I said next were the hardest words I’ve ever spoken: “We’ve done what we can do. Far more than we thought we could do. Time to call it a day.”
Interviewer: So that was it?
AS: Yes and no. We arranged to leave at one o’clock and were escorted away by the police. But not before we gave the Government sixty days to come up with proposals for a fairer tax regime, and all agreed to take action if they didn’t. But giving them that long was our big mistake; it gave them time to get organised. As you know, they did nothing, so when time was up we called a seven day protest. I led a convoy from Birtley again, with just 80 trucks as we intended to stagger the protest over the whole week. That too was a mistake, because it allowed the media to present it as a damp squib. The next day was Remembrance Day so we all had poppies as we set off on a convoy along the A1/M62/M6/M1 towards London. The police told us that no trucks would be allowed in a “ring of steel” around London, so I told most of the lads to keep away from the convoy. In the end, when we had just twenty left, the police decided we were so weak that they’d let us into London anyway – which was then all the others turned up too and 2,000 wagons clogged up the whole of London! I must be the only farmer who’s ever had a combine harvester outside Number Ten, and I was allowed into Downing Street to deliver a P45 for Blair! Then, as intended, the protest came to an end.
Interviewer: What did it achieve?
AS: The fuel duty escalator was scrapped. Fuel duty was reduced and road tax was scrapped on tractors and cut on wagons. We brought down fuel prices and kept them down well below what they otherwise would have been for years. We made fuel a big political hot potato. We made friendships which are more like being brothers. And perhaps we showed that Big Governments can only push ‘their’ people so far. Mind you, the laws they’ve brought in since give them much more power. For instance, to organise to disrupt the supply of fuel is now classed as terrorism. You’re talking to a terrorist!
Interviewer: Could the same kind of thing be done again?
AS: Not in the same way, no. The changed laws and State preparations make it impossible. But there are ways in which a determined body of protesters could make things very hard for the Government. We learned lessons as well as them. And things would be different if groups of workers in key installations would come out in sympathy. Even if they get threatened with the sack for holding unofficial strikes, no one can be punished for being the victim of a huge simultaneous flu epidemic! Read more
A Case for Treason
BREAKING NEWS
At 2pm today the Black Cab Drivers in London are holding a protest.
All BCD’s are hoping to bring Central London to a complete standstill, they will be blocking roads etc.
They are protesting at the concessions being given to mini-cab drivers that they do not have themselves. The majority of the mini-cab drivers in London are foriegn.
Yes we told you first.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7871687.stm
Please keep your Emails and Calls coming in.
VOTE NO TOMORROW!
We are urging all union members & workers to vote “NO” to tomorrows deal.
IT IS NOT ENOUGH!
We need to look at the bigger picture and secure a future for our Children too! - This is not just about NOW, it is about TOMORROW!
STAND FIRM AND VOTE NO! Read more
A Plea from a member!
It looks to me as though the strikers at Lindsey have been bought off.
Note how quickly the Government announced the “independent” ACAS are brought in to conciliate ?, Stifle it, shut it down, throw them a bone with a bit of meat on it – quick – before they blow the gaff and the whole country discovers from the TV that the UK is really not their country any more. Its been given away – bit by bit – by stealth – and against the wishes of the people – untested by referenda by successive Governments both left and right – to the point where potentially unlimited numbers of – generally poor – people can come here from the EU – and legally take up any offer of employment.
Wake up – the country our fathers and grandfathers fought and died to defend from Nazi tyranny has quietly been given away to a new tyranny – one that uses pens and treaties rather than guns and bullets. The 3rd Reich that was to last 1000 years but ended in 1945 – has been superseded by a 4th Reich that is now over 50 years old ….
I hope the strikers at Lindsey don’t go back tomorrow and see this for what it is – bribery. They have an opportunity to do something wonderful – to pursue this protest to its conclusion – a general strike – with the demand for a referendum on the proposal that this country leaves the EU. Its only this that will guarantee that our part in the 4th Reich is ended – and that consequently we will regain control of our country.
Sadly, I can see why Lindsey strike will end tomorrow – but hopefully another such dispute will occur soon and maybe that next one will ultimately deliver freedom. Read more
LEAFLETS
NEWS UPDATES
LIVE WILDCAT STRIKE MAP
Wildcat Poll
Loading ...Links
...................................................................................
...................................................................................
Advertisements
Translation
 |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| By N2H | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||