Lindsey workers show the way
This is a dispute that goes directly to the heart of what trade unions must be made into, writes Jim Moody
Keith Gibson, one of the Lindsey strike leaders and a member of the Socialist Party in England and Wales, told the Weekly Worker that if oil giant Total persists in blocking a settlement into next week, the strike committee is very likely to seek to spread the dispute farther afield, including to France (Total’s home base) and Italy. Comrade Gibson rightly insists that despite talks in London (and why are they not being held on the spot in Lindsey?), it is essential to keep the pressure on Total. And now that financial support has started to come in to the strikers, there was every reason for sacked and striking Lindsey workers to energetically travel the country, in order to win even more support and solidarity.
The tremendous solidarity action of thousands of construction workers around the country has already forced Total to pull back in its confrontation with workers at the oil refinery. The North Lincolnshire plant is the UK’s third largest of its kind, with a claimed processing capacity in excess of 10 million tonnes per annum. Ongoing construction of a new desulphurisation system has meant employment for over 700 building workers, many of whom are members of the GMB and Unite unions. But 647 were sacked after walking out in a series of protests about Total’s and its subcontractors’ intransigence and witch-hunting.
The dispute has highlighted two poles of rights (or lack of them): the employers’ right to sack workers at short notice, as opposed to the workers’ lack of rights to respond effectively, potentially hobbled as they are by trade union legislation that forces a ballot weeks ahead of strikes or other industrial action they might take. Nonetheless, of course, should workers be united and forceful enough, they can take strike action outside of the law, as we have seen recently to good effect.
In the second week of June, 51 workers (including riggers and pipefitters) were suddenly told by one sub-contractor at Lindsey, Shaw UK, that they would be made redundant at the end of the week and get a week’s pay in lieu of notice. There was no consultation beforehand either with the unions or the workers themselves. At the same time another subcontractor, R Blackett Charlton (RBC), had just taken on an extra 60 workers.
Within the terms of the national agreement for the engineering construction industry, or ‘blue book’, it is customary for workers facing redundancy to be given the opportunity of taking jobs with other subcontracting firms on the same site. But, as it was militant Shaw workers who had been at the forefront of the January strikes at Lindsey, this was not going to happen as far as the employers were concerned. They were to be turfed out as troublemakers.
Given that these employers were clearly aiming to purge militants through their hire and fire procedure, other Lindsey construction workers soon joined the protest. Subsequently, on Friday June 19 Total announced it was sacking 647 construction workers at Lindsey for participating in unofficial strikes, on the grounds that they are illegal. Total apparently agreed to talks with the unions and the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service ... but then failed to turn up to them. As GMB general secretary Paul Kenny declared, “What happened today regarding the talks with Total is an outrage and a disgrace. GMB and others, including Acas, were asked by Total early this morning to attend for talks and people travelled from all over to attend the meeting ... Bullying and intimidation is not the way to secure industrial peace.”
Of course, Acas’s role in any dispute is to stop strike action and the unions’ involvement with it has been seen by the employers as a weakness - which may be true in terms of union bureaucracies’ commitment, but is far from the case when it comes to the sacked workers at Lindsey. Employers and union leaders were soon to find out how the workers saw things.
Immediately after that weekend, all these sacked workers were given notices saying they could re-apply for their jobs individually, with a deadline of 5pm on Monday June 22. They not only openly rejected them, but burnt them in public for good measure. Working class resolve was not going to be surrendered so easily.
Solidarity walkouts were by then spreading well beyond Lindsey. Strikes took place at construction sites around the country, including at Aberthaw, BP Saltend, Didcot, Drax, Eggborough, Ellesmere Port, Ferrybridge, Fiddlers Ferry power station, Ratcliffe, Scunthorpe BOC, South Hook, Staythorpe, West Burton, and Wilton. Over 13,000 workers from 19 different sites had come out by the end of June 22; 900 contract workers at the Sellafield nuclear plant in Cumbria stopped work for three days.
Tuesday June 23 arrived and Total, by now pretty rattled that its new plant’s construction might not be completed any time soon, started to issue statements through its personnel department (‘human resources’) to the effect that it hoped its contractors would have fruitful discussions with unions representing the sacked workers. A rally attended by 2,000 construction workers from Lindsey and around the country clearly helped focus employers’ minds.
Faced with such levels of militancy and solidarity, the employers have nowhere to go. Workers have shown at Lindsey that they are prepared to break the industrial relations laws that undermine unity in action. If Total and its contractors thought that they could lock out - by sacking - these workers and expect them to come crawling on their bellies for their jobs they have been sorely mistaken. Lindsey workers, and their comrades up and down the country, have provided a revival of militancy that trade union officialdom can take and run with ... or try to dampen down. Are union leaders on the side of their members, whose livelihoods are under threat, or of lawyers and accountants who advise them always to err on the side of keeping well within the law?
The workers’ militancy must have had something to do with the GMB deciding to make available £100,000 as a hardship fund, and what with talk of the GMB battlebus making an appearance the employers had to take more notice of what they were up against. The question then arises, though, who will control those funds? Will it be the strike committee or will it be the union bureaucracy? Clearly the workers on the spot would be the best people.
Construction workers at Lindsey have been among the first to fight back against the new round of attacks on jobs and working conditions that the economic crisis inevitably provoked. It was hardly surprising that they should enter battle as they were - with all manner of backward ideas in their heads.
So resistance against undercutting by Italian and Portuguese contract workers at first appeared as a nationalistic protest, thanks to the ‘British jobs for British workers’ slogan initially raised by some strikers. However, the positive role of comrades from SPEW in particular helped show the strike in its true colours - that of workers taking action, and winning solidarity, to defend their jobs, pay and conditions. The slogan is now ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’ and those on the left who were unable to see beyond the initial appearance and condemned the January action as nationalist have been shown to be completely wrong.
Workers in this section of industry and the trade union movement know only too well how employers are continuing a long history of frequently vicious attacks on trade union organisation and collective bargaining. They prefer by far to be able to pick off individual union agitators and organisers, aided by such shady outfits as Aims of Industry and the Consulting Association, which provide lists of reds and other undesirables to subscribing firms. Blacklisting funded by the construction industry has been rife for decades and they would love to continue doing it, no matter the recent ruckus stirred by the Information Commissioner’s Office. This relatively toothless body administered slapped wrists in March for what comes naturally to these employers, having discovered discriminatory employment practices by at least 40 construction companies.
So far, mainly construction workers beyond Lindsey have shown tremendous solidarity, but there is every reason for workers in other industries to do the same. Such action delivers not only extremely valuable support to workers under attack, but also body blows against the disabling anti-trade union laws. Messages of support have been coming into strike headquarters at Lindsey, including from the FBU and RMT; and workers at Total Antwerp have expressed their solidarity. The anti-union laws, while overwhelmingly favouring employers by making effective strike action illegal, only succeed when workers agree to abide by them.
As we go to print, Lindsey construction company employers had agreed to talks with the unions, whose leaders were insisting that all dismissed workers must be taken back and no other strikers be victimised. Previously Total had said that talks could only take place if strikers employed by Jacobs, the sub-contractor, returned to their jobs. Now Total representatives have even attended the negotiations, despite trying to keep up the fiction that it was the responsibility of its contractors to sort out this particular difficulty. But as far as those whose livelihoods have been affected are concerned, their shop stewards were not invited to take part. Why not? Lindsey shop stewards are the backbone of the workers’ struggle and the direct expression of all those battling the employers there. So presumably that is exactly why not.
This is a dispute that goes directly to the heart of what trade unions must be made into: organisations fighting for workers’ needs whether or not the fight is within the ruling class’s law. We all have a responsibility to draw the lessons from this struggle and the arrow it fires at the ‘right’ of employers to sack us, while we are supposed to stay within their class law and not fight back. Our class can more than measure up to the task.
