Hull plant workers protest as contracts are terminated
Workers have been protesting outside the Saltend Chemicals plants near Hull Continue reading the main story
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More than 400 employees at a biofuels site in Hull are protesting after their contracts were terminated.
Redhall Engineering Solutions (RES) employees lost their jobs at Saltend Chemicals near Hull after the project fell behind schedule.
The GMB union said Vivergo Fuels, which owns the site, should continue to employ the workers to complete the job.
Vivergo said the construction work was suspended while another company was found to take over the contract.
RES workers protested outside West Burton Power Station near Gainsborough, Lindsey Oil Refinery in North Lincolnshire and outside RES offices in Middlesbrough in support of the Saltend workers.
'Behind schedule'
The construction workers had been building the biofuel production plant, which will turn wheat and sugar beet into fuel.
The GMB said the dispute arose when workers were not transferred to a new contractor to complete the job.
Vivergo said no new firm had taken over the RES contract and therefore there were no jobs for the workers to be transferred to.
Keith Gibson, from GMB, said: "Vivergo finished because of financial reasons, at the same time the job is running a year behind schedule and the workforce building it for them have been blocked off the job.
'No work'
"The job's going nowhere. There is four to six months work outstanding and we want to go back and finish that job."
RES said the workers were offered £3,000 compensation but this was rejected by the unions.
It said it remained sympathetic to the workers and was in negotiations to sort out the situation and ensure the workers' rights were protected.
Vivergo Fuels issued a statement saying they had cancelled the mechanical and piping works contract because the works "should have been completed by February 2011" and the construction site at Saltend had been closed for a period of assessment.
The statement said: "New contracts will have to be placed in the future but at this stage there is no contractor identified or in place to complete the work. This is likely to remain the case for some time."
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Construction workers: locked out but fighting
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by Simon Basketter
Bosses have locked out hundreds of engineering construction workers at the Saltend Chemicals plant near Hull, in Yorkshire.
The workers, who are in the Unite and GMB unions, are building a biofuels plant, have been locked out for over a week.
They are calling for other construction workers to take solidarity action.
Yet again, the subcontracting system has allowed bosses to victimise workers.
People working for Redhall Engineering Solutions had turned up for work as usual on Tuesday of last week.
They only found out they were out of a job when they arrived—but the police were clearly warned in advance.
More than 25 police officers and two police horses were waiting to stop the workers from getting on site.
One worker said, “We were met with police and police dogs. They would just not let us on site.
“It was absolutely horrendous. I have worked in this industry for 30 years and I have never come across this type of behaviour before.”
Workers responded by blocking the site entrance.
Vivergo Fuels, owned by BP, British Sugar and DuPont, runs the plant. It cancelled a contract with Redhall, saying the project is behind schedule.
Contractor
But the people suffering are the workers. Instead of transferring them to a new contractor to continue the work, bosses locked them out.
Workers on the site had taken unofficial action earlier in this month over redundancies.
Electricians and scaffolders employed by another
subcontractor have been laid off with pay. The Redhall workers received nothing.
Workers blockaded the biofuels plant and protested at the offices of the contractor in Middlesbrough and Liverpool last week.
On Monday morning, a mass meeting of workers rejected a management offer of a £3,000 pay off.
They want to be employed by the new contractors to finish the job. This is what should happen under the construction national agreement.
Behind the dispute lies a concerted attempt by multinational construction companies to tear up hard-won agreements covering the safety, wages and conditions of workers.
The aim of subcontracting is to produce a multi-layered false economy. This false economy forces cost savings to be made at every layer.
The industry is wracked with corruption. The building bosses run blacklists to keep trade union militants off sites.
Also as long as the poisonous system of contracting and subcontracting remains, there will be constant attempts to set worker against worker.
Particularly, the bosses will attempt to turn workers against low-paid migrant labour.
Everyone must stand against such divisions.
The correct response is to demand that all construction workers are paid the rate for the job. And to fight against the subcontracting system that is driving down pay and conditions across the industry.
Solidarity, and militant industrial action, is the only language the construction bosses understand
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Refinery workers will protest at north-bank job losses
PEACEFUL PROTEST: Workers from the Saltend plant at Immingham arrive at ConocoPhillips Humber Refinery to seek support for an ongoing industrial dispute.
WORKERS from the ConocoPhillips Refinery will down tools on Monday in a sympathy protest with redundant contractors on the north bank.
As reported on
Best web hosting | cloud VPS hosting | dedicated server | cpanel hosting grimsby.co.uk, they will take part in a mass protest at the Saltend Chemicals Plant near Hull, where 400 workers lost their jobs last week.
The 400 workers, who were employed by Middlesbrough-based Redhall Engineering Solutions (RES), have been "locked out" of the site since their employer's contract for mechanical and piping works on the site was cancelled because it was running behind schedule.
They had expected to be employed by the replacement contractor under Transfer of Undertakings (Tupe) regulations, and were dismayed when plant owners Vivergo Fuels said this would not be the case.
The workers have staged a series of protests outside the Saltend plant in an attempt to put pressure on Vivergo, and yesterday their campaign spread to the south bank of the Humber.
About 20 workers who live in the Grimsby area descended on both the ConocoPhillips refinery and the neighbouring Total Lindsey Oil Refinery (LOR), asking them to join Monday's protest.
Police kept a presence throughout the morning, but the protest passed peacefully.
At about 10.30am, a workers' representative from ConocoPhillips informed the protestors assembled at the front gates that they would have "100 per cent support" and that the full site would walk out to join the demonstration.
Mick Stott, 43, of Barton, one of the RES workers, described the announcement as "wonderful" news.
He said: "That's all we were asking for – full site backing for next Monday."
The protestors left before receiving a response from the workers at LOR, and Total were yesterday unable to confirm whether staff there intended to join the walkout.
ConocoPhillips were unavailable for comment.
Another group of RES workers went to West Burton Power Station near Gainsborough, where workers also agreed to join Monday's protest.
Mr Stott said: "The contract was terminated for the construction company that we work for, and Vivergo won't recognise the Tupe regulations and employ us with the new contractor.
"We are in limbo and we are not going to go away until we get employed."
Rob Drewell, 43, of Barton, said: "We had a few text messages and phone calls saying something was happening, and then we turned up for work on Monday morning and were locked out.
"It's way out of order."
Dave Baxter, 53, of Grimsby, said: "There are four to six months of work left on that site and we want to finish it off. There's no reason why we shouldn't.
"If Redhall and Vivergo do this and get away with it, it's going to destroy our industry agreements.
"If one firm gets away with it, all the others will do it and then we will be back to the dark ages.
"It's in all the workers' best interests to fight this."
RES said the workers had been offered £3,000 compensation, but this was rejected by the unions.
Vivergo Fuels said it had cancelled the mechanical and piping works contract because the works should have been completed by February.
Les Dobbs, senior organiser at the GMB Union called on BP, Du Point and British Sugar, the three contractors which make up the Vivergo Fuels consortium, to resolve the dispute.
He said: "GMB members have increasing fears that the dismissal of the UK based workforce will lead to them being replaced with lower paid, exploited overseas workers. I am calling on BP, Du Point and British Sugar to ally these fears and to intervene now to get everyone back to work."
