Thread: UK: Nuclear workers join strikes wave

BBC News
Monday, 2 February 2009


Nuclear workers join strikes wave



Protesters turned out in Lincolnshire despite the extreme weather

Contractors at two nuclear plants have walked out in support of protests over the use of foreign labour, in the latest of a wave of unofficial strikes.

The walk-outs at Sellafield and Heysham came as talks were set to start over the dispute, which began at Total-owned Lindsey oil refinery, Lincolnshire.

Workers at Grangemouth oil refinery and power stations in Longannet, Warrington and Staythorpe have also walked out.

Total insists it is not discriminating against British workers.

A statement said: "We recognise the concerns of contractors but we must stress that it has never been, and never will be, the policy of Total to discriminate against British companies or British workers."

'Best suited'

The mediation service ACAS will meet Total managers, its main contractor Jacobs, and union leaders for talks in S****horpe on Monday.

Local discussions between union officials and Total at the Lindsey refinery on Monday ended with the employer saying no more talks would happen until staff returned to work, a union representative told the crowd.

Thousands went on strike last week in a series of unofficial walk-outs around the UK, to show solidarity with workers protesting at the use of Italian and Portuguese labour at the Lindsey refinery in North Lincolnshire. We've got more in common with people and workers around this world than with those employers who are doing this to us

Keith Gibson, Unite


Newslog: 'Ministers differ on strikes'

Workers there were angry a contract to expand the refinery was sub-contracted by Jacobs to an Italian firm, IREM, which decided to use its own workforce.

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson had earlier urged workers to call off planned "sympathy strikes".

He stressed that under EU law companies had the right to sub-contract work to those companies "best suited" for the job.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that claims British workers had been excluded from the disputed contract, or that foreign workers were being paid less than the going rate, were both unfounded.

But protests gathered pace on Monday:


• About 300 protesters gathered at the Lindsey refinery's terminal gates.


• Around 600 workers met in a car park at Sellafield, in Cumbria, to discuss industrial action and about 1,300 workers are believed to be taking part in a 24-hour stoppage at the plant.



Strike organisers at Lindsey oil refinery address workers

• About 400 contractors at Longannet in Fifeshire voted to stay out for 24 hours, and to return for another meeting at 0730 GMT on Tuesday.


• Some 300 contractors at the Grangemouth oil refinery in central Scotland walked out but decided they would return to work on Tuesday.


• Around 200 construction workers at Fiddlers Ferry Power station near Warrington, Cheshire, have again downed tools, following similar action on Friday.


• About 150 contractors walked out at Drax Power Station, near Selby in North Yorkshire.


• The owners of Coryton oil refinery in Thurrock, Essex, said a number of workers had walked out but refinery operations were unaffected.

Sellafield striker and GMB convener Willie Doggert, said: "All we want is a level playing field, it's not just about foreign workers, we need jobs to be advertised with transparency - so that everybody gets a far crack of the whip."

Addressing the crowd in Lincolnshire, Unite's Keith Gibson called for construction workers to take action "right around this country" to show they were not prepared to let the industry "go to the dogs".

"Any lads coming into this industry, whether they be Spanish, French, Italian or Irish, we want access to them on a trade union basis," he said.

"We've got more in common with people and workers around this world than with those employers who are doing this to us."

He said workers wanted the government and employers to prevent discrimination and to provide cash to train "a new generation of workers" to come into the sector. FROM THE TODAY PROGRAMME


More from Today programme

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he understood fears over jobs, but said walk-outs were "not the right thing to do".

The government has said it might challenge EU law to stop cheap foreign labour "undercutting" British workers.

Health Secretary Alan Johnson, a former union leader, said both the government and trade unions strongly backed EU laws on the free movement of labour.

But he said some of the protections in EU law may have been undermined by recent judgements in the European Court of Justice.

Former Labour minister Frank Field has urged Mr Brown to push for a change in EU law to protect workers.

Total said it operated under UK and EU laws, that it sub-contracted "on a non-discriminatory basis" and that wage rates were the same as those offered for equivalent jobs on site.

'Silly things'

Shadow business secretary Kenneth Clarke said the strikes were not the "right way" for people to demonstrate their concerns.

He told Today: "We should make sure that people's understandable rage that they are the innocent victims of this problem doesn't lead to them doing silly things and certainly doesn't lead to policy being made on foolish grounds."

Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, which supports Britain's exit from the EU, said: "'British jobs for British workers' will only happen when Britain is run by and for Britons."

But the Lib Dems have warned against any move by the government to exempt Britain from EU employment laws.

Leader Nick Clegg said such a decision would constitute an "own goal" because if other EU countries followed suit the UK would have to cope with a "massive influx" of Britons who currently work overseas.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7863879.stm

The government has said it might challenge EU law to stop cheap foreign labour "undercutting" British workers.

Health Secretary Alan Johnson, a former union leader, said both the government and trade unions strongly backed EU laws on the free movement of labour.

But he said some of the protections in EU law may have been undermined by recent judgements in the European Court of Justice.

Former Labour minister Frank Field has urged Mr Brown to push for a change in EU law to protect workers.

Here's an interesting report from The Heritage Foundation which is critical of the EU "ambitions of becoming the world's first supranational superstate" and refers to the Lisbon Treaty/EU Constitution as "a Blueprint for a European Superstate".


March 7, 2008

The EU Lisbon Treaty: Gordon Brown Surrenders Britain's Sovereignty

by Nile Gardiner, Ph.D. and Sally McNamara


Prime Minister Gordon Brown's decision to reject a referendum on the new European Union Reform Treaty (Treaty of Lisbon) should be viewed as one of the biggest acts of political betrayal in modern British history. Despite a rebellion by 29 of its own backbenchers, the Labour-led government defeated a Conservative proposal to hold a popular vote on the Lisbon Treaty by 311 votes to 248 in the House of Commons on March 5. Brown's refusal to support a referendum represented a stunning reversal of the government's 2005 manifesto pledge to hold a plebiscite on the European Constitution.

The Commons vote flew in the face of fierce public opposition to the Lisbon Treaty and mounting calls for the British public to have its say. In a series of unofficial mini-referenda held across several marginal seats in early March, 89 percent of the more than 150,000 voters who took part voted against the treaty, with just 8 percent in favor.[1] These votes reflected consistently high levels of opposition to the treaty in virtually all major polls on the issue in the U.K. in the past few months.

Most British voters have already concluded that the Lisbon Treaty is almost identical to the old European Constitution, which was emphatically rejected by electorates in France and Holland in 2005. If ratified in all European capitals, the treaty will come into force in January 2009, and the implications for the future of Europe are immense. So far, only the Irish government has been brave enough to stand up to Brussels and insist on a popular vote by its citizens.

The new Treaty poses the biggest threat to national sovereignty in Europe since the Second World War, would threaten the future of the Anglo-American Special Relationship, and would significantly weaken the transatlantic alliance.

A Blueprint for a European Superstate

Like the rejected constitution, the new Reform Treaty is also a blueprint for a European superstate dreamt up by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. This time around, however, most of Europe doesn't get to vote, as democracy is too dangerous a concept for the architects of this grand vision of an EU superpower.

Originally envisioned as a single market within Europe, the EU (formerly European Economic Community) is morphing into a gigantic political entity with ambitions of becoming the world's first supranational superstate. Already, major strides have been made in the development of a unified European foreign and security policy as well as a supranational legal structure. With the introduction of the euro in 1999, the European single currency and European Central Bank became a reality.

Drafted in 2004, the European Constitution was a huge step forward in the evolution of what is commonly known as the "European Project," or the drive toward "ever closer union." With its 448 articles, the constitution was a vast vanity project, conceived in Paris, Berlin, and Brussels, that dramatically crashed to Earth three years ago. Since then, European Union apparatchiks have worked feverishly to resurrect the constitution, coming up with a cosmetic makeover that would make a plastic surgeon proud.

The new treaty contains all the main elements of the constitution, repackaged in flowery language. According to the European Scrutiny Committee, a British parliamentary body, only two of the treaty's 440 provisions were not contained in the original constitution.[2]

The Reform Treaty paves the way for the creation of a European Union foreign minister (high representative) at the head of an EU foreign service (with its own diplomatic corps) as well as a long-term EU president; both positions are trappings of a fledgling superstate. As European Parliament member Daniel Hannan has pointed out, the treaty will further erode the legal sovereignty of European nation-states, entrenching a pan-European magistracy ("Eurojust"), a European Public Prosecutor, a federal EU police force ("Europol"), and an EU criminal code ("corpus juris").[3] In addition, countries such as Britain will sacrifice their veto right over EU decision-making in 40 policy areas.

A Democratic Deficit

Europe doesn't need a constitution. The European Union is not the United States of Europe. The EU is a grouping of 27 independent nation-states, each with its own culture, language, heritage, and national interests. The EU works best as a single economic market that facilitates the free movement of goods, services, and people. It is far less successful as a political entity that tries to force its member states to conform to an artificial common identity.

The European Constitution and its successor treaty are all about the centralization of political power in the hands of a gilded ruling elite in Brussels, not the protection of individual liberty. They are also based on the principle that sovereignty should be pooled by nation-states for the "greater good" of Europe, a concept that goes against the grain of modern history, as witnessed with the break-up of the old Soviet Empire.

The notion that the people of Europe should not have a vote on a treaty with huge implications for the future of the continent demonstrates the utter contempt that the Brussels bureaucracy has for the average man or woman on the street. There is no doubt that if the treaty were put to a popular vote, the electorates of several countries would reject it. The whole "European Project" is fundamentally undemocratic, unaccountable, and opaque. If subjected to referenda across the EU, it would almost certainly be consigned to the dustbin of history.

A Threat to the Special Relationship

For both sides of the Atlantic, the Lisbon Treaty is bad news. The treaty poses a massive threat to the future of the Anglo-American Special Relationship as well as the broader transatlantic alliance. It will further entrench Europe's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP), both major threats to the future of NATO, and will seriously impair the ability of America's allies in Europe to stand alongside the United States where and when they choose to do so.

An America without Britain alongside it would be far more isolated and friendless and significantly less able to project power on the world stage. For Washington, there is no real alternative to the Special Relationship. Its collapse would be damaging to America's standing as a global power and would significantly weaken her leadership of the war against Islamist terrorism.

A Future British Government Must Hold a Referendum

The next British government, which must be elected by 2010 at the latest, should listen to the growing calls of the British people for a vote on the Lisbon Treaty. The public should have the final say on an agreement that will dramatically undermine the U.K.'s ability to shape her own destiny. If, as is highly likely, the public rejects the treaty, Britain should withdraw from its provisions and seek a broader renegotiation of its relationship with the European Union.

The next Prime Minister, if Brown is replaced, should heed the words of Lady Thatcher, who wrote in her seminal book Statecraft: "That such an unnecessary and irrational project as building a European superstate was ever embarked upon will seem in future years to be perhaps the greatest folly of the modern era."[4] The Iron Lady's instincts are right: Common sense must prevail, and the British people should have the freedom to reject an Orwellian vision of Europe's future in favor of the principles of sovereignty and freedom.

Nile Gardiner, Ph.D., is the Director of, and Sally McNamara is Senior Policy Analyst in European Affairs in, the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies, at The Heritage Foundation. Erica Munkwitz assisted with research for this paper.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Europe/wm1840.cfm

Wooooooooooooooo Hooooooooooooooo I'm hoping this spreads world wide