Written by Janet
Prime Minister Gordon Brown told an angry crowd that “Wildcat” strikes are not defensible….since the hiring of foreign workers. Hundreds of employees across the UK walked out over the use of overseas staff at a refinery in Lincolnshire.
Gordon Brown told the BBC’s Politics Show he understood workers’ worries, but spontaneous walkouts were “not the right thing to do”. Earlier, Lord Mandelson said protectionism could turn a recession into a depression.
Yesterday, sympathy strikes spread across the country, after workers walked out at the Lindsey Oil Refinery when owner Total gave a £200m contract to Italian firm IREM. Mr. Brown spoke from the Economic Forum in Switzerland, stating, “I have always understood the worries that people have. They look round and say, well, why can’t we do these jobs, jobs ourselves, these are jobs that we can do.” “I have always understood the worries that people have. They look round and say, well, why can’t we do these jobs, jobs ourselves, these are jobs that we can do.” “I have always understood the worries that people have. They look round and say, well, why can’t we do these jobs, jobs ourselves, these are jobs that we can do.” “I have always understood the worries that people have. They look round and say, well, why can’t we do these jobs, jobs ourselves, these are jobs that we can do.” “I have always understood the worries that people have. They look round and say, well, why can’t we do these jobs, jobs ourselves, these are jobs that we can do.”
But he said instead of spontaneous strike action, “what we’ve got to do over time, as I’ve always said, is that where there are jobs in this country, we need people with the skills, developed in this country”.
The prime minister said the government was meeting this challenge by increasing apprenticeships so that the country’s skill set would be “ready for the upturn in a more effective way that we were in the past”. “You’ll find that no government in history is doing more to try and find ways that we can help people who are unemployed back in to work as quickly as possible.” How, by hiring foreign workers?
He also said that even in the current economic climate about two million jobs “change hands every month” and that the country currently had about 500,000 job vacancies. Then it’s about time the jobs were filled by the skilled workers already in the UK.
But Lord Mandelson said: “It would be a huge mistake to retreat from a policy where within the rules, UK companies can operate in Europe and European companies can operate here.
“Protectionism would be a sure-fire way of turning recession into depression.” Face facts, we are already in a depression, with more jobs lost each day.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said refinery workers were “rightly angry” at employers denying British-based workers the chance to apply for new jobs. The government has called in Acas to look into claims that British workers were being illegally excluded from engineering and construction projects, while unions have urged Mr Brown to meet heads of industry in the sectors.
Total has said there would be no “direct redundancies” as a result of handing the contract to construct a new unit at the Lindsey plant to the Italian firm, and that the tendering process had been “fair”.
In a statement, Total said it “recognised” the concerns of contractors, that it had been a major local employer for 40 years and had 550 permanent staff employed at the refinery.
IREM employs a specialist workforce and its 300 or more employees would be paid the same as existing contractors on the project, Total’s bosses added. Workers have demanded Mr Brown fulfils a promise he made at the 2007 Labour Party conference of providing “British jobs for British workers”.
However, employment Minister Pat McFadden said this had not meant that UK firms would be encouraged to flout European laws on free mobility of labour. And UKIP leader Nigel Farage said Acas would be powerless to help because European law barred countries from reserving jobs for its own workers.
