Skip to content or view mobile version

Home | Mobile | Editorial | Mission | Privacy | About | Contact | Help | Security | Support

A network of individuals, independent and alternative media activists and organisations, offering grassroots, non-corporate, non-commercial coverage of important social and political issues.

INEOS announce Grangemouth Petrochemical Plant to close/Workers continue fight

Waltzing Matilda | 23.10.2013 15:33 | Globalisation | Workers' Movements

This morning in a shock annoucement INEOS Refining - owner of Grangemouth Oil Refinery & Petrochemical Plant - announced that the petrochemical plant at Grangemouth was to close, with 800 people to be made redundant. It comes after Unite members voted for strike-action on 27th September, with 90% voting in favour of a strike with an 86% turnout, after INEOS issued workers with a ‘sign or be sacked’ ultimatum to slash jobs, pay and pensions with a deadline by 6pm Monday 21 October. This further escalation of closure shows the brute careless abandon of INEOS controlled by billionaire hedge fund owner, Jim Ratcliffe, that compromises the entire oil industry and petrol supplies throughout the UK particularly Scotland, and the shameless opportunism of a company resorting to the worst example of industrial vandalism in living memory to get their own way, who have refused union demands to allow the company accounts to be reviewed by an independent assessor of the union's choosing.

This morning in a shock annoucement INEOS Refining - owner of Grangemouth Oil Refinery & Petrochemical Plant - announced that the petrochemical plant at Grangemouth was to close, with 800 people to be made redundant. It comes after Unite members voted for strike-action on 27th September, with 90% voting in favour of a strike with an 86% turnout, after INEOS issued workers with a ‘sign or be sacked’ ultimatum to slash jobs, pay and pensions with a deadline by 6pm Monday 21 October.

INEOS Refining is Europe's leading independent crude oil refiner. The plant provides 80% of Scotland's fuel suppli4es and also supplies fuel to parts of northern England and Northern Ireland. The plant provides 70% of the fuel for Scotland's filling stations. The plant accounts for 13.4% of the UK's oil refinery capacity. The Grangemouth complex employs 1,400 permeanent employess on site, with around 1,100 of them union members represented by Unite. The site employs another 2000 contractors and INEOS estimate that another 10,000 jobs rely indirectly on the factory. The closure has come after a row over the suspension of worker and union shop steward Stevie Deans who has worked at the plant for 24 years.

Deans is the branch secretary of Falkirk Labour Party, which earlier this year became embroiled in a dispute with the Labour leadership under Ed Miliband. Deans was accused of signing up Labour Party members without their knowledge, a charge which both the police and the Labour Party investigated and found unsubstantiated. Some of those signed up were, it is alleged, workers at the INEOS plant.

INEOS appears to have seized on the allegations to victimise Deans and provoke a strike. Employed at the plant for 24 years, Deans’ computer was seized and his email has reportedly been trawled for evidence relating to the Falkirk Labour dispute.

Following 16 hours of talks without agreement, Unite officials called off the strike in the face of INEOS’ initiation of a “cold shutdown”. Unite’s Scottish secretary Pat Rafferty insisted that the strike was aborted “to protect this national asset from the scandalous behaviour of its owner.”

Complex chemical plants such as the Grangemouth facility take many days to shut down and start up. The process is dangerous and fraught. By carrying out a “cold shutdown”, INEOS effectively extended to up to one month the period in which the plant is not operating. By contrast, seeking merely a token expression of dissent, Unite sought a “hot standby” which allows production to be resumed much more easily and with far less disruption in production. INEOS, it is now clear, used the shutdown to pressure Grangemouth workers into accepting savage cuts to their conditions.

This further escalation of closure shows the brute careless abandon and shameless opportunism of a company resorting to the worst example of industrial vandalism in living memory to get their own way, who have refused union demands to allow the company accounts to be reviewed by an independent assessor of the union's choosing.


Scottish workers continue to fight against Ineos for their future
23.10.2013
Source:  http://www.industriall-union.org/scottish-workers-continue-to-fight-against-ineos-for-their-future

Members of IndustriALL Global Union’s UK affiliate Unite the Union at INEOS in Grangemouth, Scotland keeps on resisting the company’s outrageous threats and intimidations.

Towards the end of last week, Ineos shamefully gave workers with a ‘sign or be sacked’ ultimatum to slash jobs, pay and pensions with a deadline by 6pm Monday 21 October. As a response, Unite the Union urged Grangemouth workers not to give in to Ineos’ ‘menacing’ tactics to sign away their rights since this would create a two tier workforce and strip away collective rights. Unite also questioned the legality of the company’s actions and vowed not to allow workers being ‘menaced’ into signing away their livelihoods.

In the meantime, Unite the Union called again on Ineos to abandon its plans to impose detrimental new terms on its Grangemouth workforce and instead to reopen the plant and return to mediated negotiations to secure the site's future. At the Acas talks, Unite committed to conducting no industrial action ballots or industrial action before 31 December 2013.

Unite the Union also called on the anti-avoidance arm of Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to investigate the tax affairs of the Ineos Group amid concerns that the company's arrangements ‘obfuscate the true position of Ineos' UK activities’. The formal request followed questions about apparent accounting contradictions in Ineos’ ‘Chemical’ accounts which simultaneously paint both a gloomy and upbeat assessment of the company's finances and future profitability.

The Grangemouth workers and their union, together with local politicians, communities and supporters from across Scotland organized a demonstration and rally on Sunday, October 21 to urge Ineos to get the plant working and drop their tactics of intimidation. The demonstration appealed to the community and the Scottish people to support the Grangemouth workforce, warning that Ineos bosses risk destroying good Scottish jobs as they hold the country to ransom through their irresponsible behaviour.

At the end of the so-called deadline given by INEOS, 665, over 65 per cent (out of 80 per cent of the workforce represented by Unite) have rejected the company’s cynical attempt to intimidate the workforce. Unite the Union then urged the company back to ACAS talks since the resounding rejection of the company’s cynical blackmail sent a clear message to INEOS.

Along with this, INEOS has contracted a PR firm which advertises itself as having “extensive experience of dealing with crisis situations including industrial disputes, fatal accidents, profit warnings, child labour, product failures, customer service issues, redundancies and restructuring”. The firm has been running what the Unite union described as a `campaign of fear' designed to terrify the 1,400 strong workforce into believing that the site is on the verge of collapse, despite a buoyant energy market, in order to force through swingeing cuts to their pay, jobs and pensions.

"Enough is enough", said Jyrki Raina, General Secretary of IndustriALL Global Union. "Our global union family, particularly our affiliates in the countries where INEOS has operations, will continue to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Grangemouth workers and their union Unite."

IndustriALL Global Union is organizing a demonstration in front of the headquarters of INEOS located in the Swiss town of Rolle on Friday, 25 October.

IndustriALL also calls all its affiliates to take action and send letters of protest to INEOS through the take action box on the right.



Waltzing Matilda

Comments

Upcoming Coverage
View and post events
Upcoming Events UK
24th October, London: 2015 London Anarchist Bookfair
2nd - 8th November: Wrexham, Wales, UK & Everywhere: Week of Action Against the North Wales Prison & the Prison Industrial Complex. Cymraeg: Wythnos o Weithredu yn Erbyn Carchar Gogledd Cymru

Ongoing UK
Every Tuesday 6pm-8pm, Yorkshire: Demo/vigil at NSA/NRO Menwith Hill US Spy Base More info: CAAB.

Every Tuesday, UK & worldwide: Counter Terror Tuesdays. Call the US Embassy nearest to you to protest Obama's Terror Tuesdays. More info here

Every day, London: Vigil for Julian Assange outside Ecuadorian Embassy

Parliament Sq Protest: see topic page
Ongoing Global
Rossport, Ireland: see topic page
Israel-Palestine: Israel Indymedia | Palestine Indymedia
Oaxaca: Chiapas Indymedia
Regions
All Regions
Birmingham
Cambridge
Liverpool
London
Oxford
Sheffield
South Coast
Wales
World
Other Local IMCs
Bristol/South West
Nottingham
Scotland
Social Media
You can follow @ukindymedia on indy.im and Twitter. We are working on a Twitter policy. We do not use Facebook, and advise you not to either.
Support Us
We need help paying the bills for hosting this site, please consider supporting us financially.
Other Media Projects
Schnews
Dissident Island Radio
Corporate Watch
Media Lens
VisionOnTV
Earth First! Action Update
Earth First! Action Reports
Topics
All Topics
Afghanistan
Analysis
Animal Liberation
Anti-Nuclear
Anti-militarism
Anti-racism
Bio-technology
Climate Chaos
Culture
Ecology
Education
Energy Crisis
Fracking
Free Spaces
Gender
Globalisation
Health
History
Indymedia
Iraq
Migration
Ocean Defence
Other Press
Palestine
Policing
Public sector cuts
Repression
Social Struggles
Technology
Terror War
Workers' Movements
Zapatista
Major Reports
NATO 2014
G8 2013
Workfare
2011 Census Resistance
Occupy Everywhere
August Riots
Dale Farm
J30 Strike
Flotilla to Gaza
Mayday 2010
Tar Sands
G20 London Summit
University Occupations for Gaza
Guantanamo
Indymedia Server Seizure
COP15 Climate Summit 2009
Carmel Agrexco
G8 Japan 2008
SHAC
Stop Sequani
Stop RWB
Climate Camp 2008
Oaxaca Uprising
Rossport Solidarity
Smash EDO
SOCPA
Past Major Reports
Encrypted Page
You are viewing this page using an encrypted connection. If you bookmark this page or send its address in an email you might want to use the un-encrypted address of this page.
If you recieved a warning about an untrusted root certificate please install the CAcert root certificate, for more information see the security page.

Global IMC Network


www.indymedia.org

Projects
print
radio
satellite tv
video

Africa

Europe
antwerpen
armenia
athens
austria
barcelona
belarus
belgium
belgrade
brussels
bulgaria
calabria
croatia
cyprus
emilia-romagna
estrecho / madiaq
galiza
germany
grenoble
hungary
ireland
istanbul
italy
la plana
liege
liguria
lille
linksunten
lombardia
madrid
malta
marseille
nantes
napoli
netherlands
northern england
nottingham imc
paris/île-de-france
patras
piemonte
poland
portugal
roma
romania
russia
sardegna
scotland
sverige
switzerland
torun
toscana
ukraine
united kingdom
valencia

Latin America
argentina
bolivia
chiapas
chile
chile sur
cmi brasil
cmi sucre
colombia
ecuador
mexico
peru
puerto rico
qollasuyu
rosario
santiago
tijuana
uruguay
valparaiso
venezuela

Oceania
aotearoa
brisbane
burma
darwin
jakarta
manila
melbourne
perth
qc
sydney

South Asia
india


United States
arizona
arkansas
asheville
atlanta
Austin
binghamton
boston
buffalo
chicago
cleveland
colorado
columbus
dc
hawaii
houston
hudson mohawk
kansas city
la
madison
maine
miami
michigan
milwaukee
minneapolis/st. paul
new hampshire
new jersey
new mexico
new orleans
north carolina
north texas
nyc
oklahoma
philadelphia
pittsburgh
portland
richmond
rochester
rogue valley
saint louis
san diego
san francisco
san francisco bay area
santa barbara
santa cruz, ca
sarasota
seattle
tampa bay
united states
urbana-champaign
vermont
western mass
worcester

West Asia
Armenia
Beirut
Israel
Palestine

Topics
biotech

Process
fbi/legal updates
mailing lists
process & imc docs
tech