Oil refinery strikes

[jazzactivist]

Hi all. What do you think about the workers' strike at Lindsey Oil Refinery in Lincolnshire and the other supporting strikes around the country? I must admit that while I am normally in support of workers striking for their rights I am not so sure about this one. While their union reps have stated that this isn't protectionism or racism, it seems to me that complaining that an Italian company sub-contracted to carry out some work in the UK has brought its own trusted Italian and Portugese workers over instead of employing local British labour is both of those things. I do understand that it can be galling to unemployed skilled British workers now that jobs are becoming harder to find and retain, but those Italian and Portugese workers need the work just as much and can surely expect to be employed by one of their own companies. Surely this is just an example of the globalisation that politicians and companies seem to love so much these days. What do you think?

[Crocus]

Not living in the UK I'm not really at liberty to say anything on this, but it does make sense to a certain extent if a foreign company offers jobs to it's own people. It may differ from one country to another, but in principle I think they should find a happy medium somewhere? A foreign company investing in a host country must realise that they operate on local soil with local rules and regulations as well as local people working for the company. OH always does the test by reversing a situation.

[Clunkshift]

I think it is typical of the union mentality to show exactly why the work went to an Italian Contractor in the first place.
I have no sympathy for them whatsoever...

[Hedgehog]

What about all the Brits working abroad. Smacks of protectionism to me.

[eleanor2]

i am very patriotic.i think British workers should be offered the jobs first.it is not actually easy to get work in France if you are not French.so i am guessing other European countries like to look after their own too.you know it makes sense to employ British.or else we are paying out for foreign workers and putting our own people on the dole.it is British tax payers paying for it in the end.so i think British workers should have their say.who is the British government supposed to be looking after.

[Clunkshift]

Eleanor,

I have to disagree with you about "british jobs for british workers". This dispute is about work being done on the Lindsay oils / Total refinery on Humberside (which used to be ICI before being sold off to "foreign investors").

It so happens that the company I work for has just been awarded site services for Shell Stanlow refinery for the next 2 years. "Our" company is in fact American and awards sub-contracts to bidders form any country that will do work to the required standard and we design equipment, which we then purchase from fabricators anywhere in the world, on the basis of price and delivery. On Humberside, Total (French) through Lindsay oil have awarded a contract to an Italian company, there is nothing to stop British workers from working for that company - except that this was all planned 2 years ago when everything was booming here and no-one wanted the dirty site jobs...

Now the Chinese Premier is visiting Gordon Brown at the moment and Gordon is hoping to win work for "British" companies. But why should the Chinese allow foreigners like us to take Chinese jobs away from Chinese workers?

Protectionism doesn't work - there is no such thing as British steel, it is foreign owned (just like Doultons isn't British), and in the oil industry we have thousands of Brits working on foreign oil rigs (are there any british rigs?) and working in Norway.
In the worst case, Lindsay Oil is not a big company and Total could move their operations easily, how would you feel if this strike caused Humberside to shut down? Total could just increase refined product shipments to Fawley, Coryton and Milford Haven and just pump it along a pipe to distribution centres in the Midlands. These strikers had better learn to smile sweetly and ask "do you want fries with that?" because those will be the only jobs left on Humberside if they screw this up.

Oh and Brits striking at nuclear power stations just when we have to ask foreign (French, US, German & Italian) companies to bid for building new power stations? That will make the successful bidders take on local workers won't it?
I happen to be in one of the last batches of british workers that worked on the design of nulear power stations (Heysham & Torness). Since then I have only done nuclear work for the French (Framatome), and a French company has just taken over one of the few remaining small English nuclear design companies (Gravatom). If Britsh workers are too stupid to see how we lost a steel industry and want to see every last opportunity for engineering construction disappear too, thank goodness I can soon retire (If we get the big Indian refinery project) and leave them all to it.

Clunk.
Non-Union, self employed oil & gas engineer

[eleanor2]

clunk i think you will find it is not the British workers who make these stupid mistakes but governments and greedy bosses.the workers just normally do as they are told.i dont agree with our businesses being sold off to foreign companies in the first place.i do realise the world is changing.to be patriotic to your country is going out of date.i am not being prejudice when i stick up for my country.if i was born French,German or swiss etc i am sure i would be just as patriotic for those countries.i love France.i could go and live there.i would have a much better life.but i have roots here.this is my country and i would love to see it run better and more fairly.i know that every country now is mingling its companies.there is nothing i or the ordinaryworkers can do about it.but when these workers see thier jobs threatened.not for any reason i am sure other than financial.you cant blame them for protesting.i hate strikes and the trouble they cause.i hate people trying to hold other people to ransom over issues.but the way things are going there is much unrest.the little people feel helpless as the bosses push them around.i dont know what the answer is.i dont understand the bigger issues.thanks for pointing them out clunk.i am just speaking as a little person watchng her country sink.even so i am very appreciative and thankful for my country and the way we have so many freedoms.when i look at the poverty of other countries.i realise we need to be more appreciative of what we have.not to be defeatist at the slightest blip.

[eleanor2]

p.s. when i am in FRance the biggest thing i notice.they all drive French made cars.they all produce locally the food.which is sold in markets and super markets whatever the shape and size.many of their products are made in France.they recycle absolutely everything or get told off by the mairie.the families suport each other.when we walk up the country lanes.you often see grandads tending the gardens cus they still live as nuclear families.ohhhhhhh am droaning on.wishing we still had more old fashioned standards.

[jazzactivist]

I am a big fan of trade unions and think that they play a very important role in protecting workers' rights in the workplace. Otherwise even more worker exploitation would be rife, as it was in Victorian times and is now in poorer countries. However, I have to agree with clunk on this matter. There is no such thing as a large British-only firm any more. All have foreign investors or are owned by overseas parent companies. To me, this mass strike is thinly veiled racism - trying to protect jobs in the UK for British workers regardless of whether they are considered to be the best people for the job. And then it raises the question of how British is British? Would workers who didn't get the job then turn on colleagues with British citizenship who haven't been born or brought up here? Unfortunately, in many countries British workers have quite a bad reputation as lazy and uncompromising, so it isn't surprising that companies prefer their own workers whom they know and trust. It would be an enlightening project to ask these British workers whether they drive British cars, shop locally, or holiday in the UK, eleanor. I bet that most of them don't, but are just not making the connection between what they say and what they do. There is no such thing as little people just doing their job without any power. We all have the power to make choices and decisions that are the fairest.

I think that this strike is also a bad move for the unions showing ignorance of the bigger picture that, after all, they helped to start by buying into the idea of the global free market in the first place. Of course it would be good if there was full employment of our own nationals in each country, but free markets rely on a certain percentage of unemployment to create a pool of cheap labour to keep the low prices that we all expect. Also, monocultures in any situation, especially a work one, isn't the healthiest of environments as practices can narrow and stagnate. It is amazing how differently people from different countries can carry out the same work and we can all learn a lot from one another. I think that these unions and strikers are misguided and can only do themselves harm by this xenophobic attitude. I wouldn't even want fries with it!

[eleanor2]

i have heard British workers wernt offered a chance to apply for the jobs.i also think they are bringing in foreign workers because they are cheaper and dont have to be looked after e.g pensions,holiday and sickness pay to British standards.i may be wrong in my surmise.

[jazzactivist]

Workers who are brought here by their company but are citizens of other countries still pay tax and other stopages to their own country, eleanor. Sometimes they even pay both to their own country and to Britain whilst they are living here and then have to claim back overpayments the following year. Their company has to abide by specific laws here and in their own country, and some countries have better arrangements for tax, benefits etc than the UK, and others worse. The strikers claim that they aren't being racist or xenophobic and are just concerned about lowering standards, but some of the comments on the media footage, including warnings to foreign workers to stay away during the strike "just in case of any violence", tells a different story. I don't think that these strikers have thought their situation through well enough and are just knee-jerking to the idea that someone else might be considered to be better qualified for a job than they are during a period where jobs may not be as easy to come by. It is a classic, dare I say British, case of blaming somene else for their troubles. If they are as well qualified and experienced as they claim then they will always be able to get work somewhere.

[Clunkshift]

Here is a link to an explanation of the Italian company winning a competitive tender from a US contracting company for a contract to a French Oil company in Humberside.
http://www.thepress.co.uk/news/analysis/4096693.Issues_behind_the_protests_over_foreign_jo bs/

When companies that I work for win a job in another country, they don't advertise for the locals to do the job, they employ people they know and trust to do the job. But if a local subcontractor is needed for the unskilled labour, then the locals get a chance; that is how it works everywhere.

Eleanor, you are wrong about payments and benefits - they are equal and common within the EU and most workers abroad (Italians working here) are actually more expensive to their employers than locals. But of course they can read Italian drawings and specifications and probably speak to their French counterparts at Total.

I drive an American badged car, built with US and German parts by a manufacturing facility in Austria. I can't buy "British" because Ford is US owned as is General Motors while Jaguar and land Rover are Indian owned. If no-one bought "our" Nissans, Hondas and Toyotas in Europe there would be even more unemployed Brits.

You probably don't know that the British Army is driving MAN German lorries or that the only mine-proof LandRover replacements are Italian - because there is no suitable British vehicle.
When we finally get our new aircraft carriers, they will have US planes on them and will be of no benefit to our economy at all.

Napoleon said we were a nation of shopkeepers, but now we are just a nation of shoppers buying foreign goods.
There is no British manufacturer of televisions, because the tubes and screens all come from the Far East. Almost all our "white goods" are made in Eastern Europe or Korea and we can't even recycle our own scrap metal. Everyone wants a mobile phone but none are made here.

Qualified engineers have been shabbily treated for years (we're not professional enough to sign a passport like a policeman, nurse or teacher can). Everyone that wields a dustpan and brush calls themself an engineer but without design, there is no manufacture and without manufacture there is no work for the brainless unqualified labourers that strike for their "rights".

If the 2 million brits working overseas had to come home and the 1 million foreign workers here went home, we would have 1 million more unemployed.
so procetionism doesn't help.

President Obama is talking of protection for American Steel - what the Canadians and Australians will do for retaliation will be interesting, they will probably put huge tariffs on Aluminium and Nickel exports to the US.

The reason I have a job in a competitive market is that I spent 7 years at college and then trained in my own time at night school (twice) while in my 30's to maintain a competitive CV. Most of these strikers are just scared becasue they know that they are less qualified than the competition and too lazy to do anything about it.

But if things get too tough here, at least I know I can go and work in Madrid, Den Haag, Paris or Milan, because real skills are always transferable and the EU is an open market.

[eleanor2]

i think we have to be a bit fairer on the British.yes we have had it a bit easy and got lazy about things.but there are still hard working and educated people out there.it has just been cheaper to keep importing foreign goods.which has cut out much of the manufacturing in Britain.i think the biggest problem is we have priced ourselves out of the world market.by expecting higher wages for less hours work.remploy was near us they did electronics.shut down.j.c.b some of the the best heavy haulage vehicles in the world.very expensive so affected by world credit crunch.i mean the swiss watch was always known as the best.but more people buy cheaper imports.i think a lot of it comes down to cost. i would like to know do these foreign workers use our national health service that British tax payers pay for.......we all accept that each country poaches skilled workers.this strike is about the fact that there are British with these skills they just havnt had a chance to apply for the jobs.i admit i am not fully aware of all the background.but i think most of this comes down to finances.how many producers in Britain are taking there manufacturing abroard.it is not by a long chalk better quality.i still have 30 year old made in England products like new.they are sturdy very well made products.but the greed of the British has led to the problems not the skills from what i can see.