CORRECT: Around 4000 Contractors Walkout At UK Energy Sites
June 23 2009 - 12:39PM
Dow Jones News
More than 4,000 U.K. contract workers downed tools at energy
plants Tuesday in support of sacked workers at Total SA's (TOT)
200,000-barrels-a-day Lindsey oil refinery, in a dispute that has
cost the French oil major EUR100 million.
At least 8% of contractors in the U.K.'s engineering
construction industry walked out of more than a dozen sites Tuesday
as strikes swept across the country, but the number of strikers is
likely to be even higher because some companies haven't reported
the extent of the walkouts at their facilities.
Total said Friday that its contractors had issued dismissal
notices to workers on a hydro-desulfurization project at Lindsey.
The contractors offered a deadline of Monday afternoon for workers
to reapply for their jobs following a week of unofficial strike
action. Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., the main contract company
involved, has declined to comment.
Total said delays, under-performance and low productivity at the
project have already cost in the region of an additional EUR100
million.
The Lindsey dispute has become a flashpoint for skilled
construction workers, sensitive to a slowdown in jobs and the use
of foreign labor. The latest strikes - which are unofficial because
they haven't been called by the unions or gone through the U.K.'s
legal requirements for industrial action - are an escalation from
several rounds of labor strife that erupted earlier this year and
could widen in the coming days.
Talks between the Lindsey contractors and unions have started in
London over how to facilitate the return of the workers. Total said
it is "actively encouraging" the talks.
"We've been faced with significant delays and this project is on
thin ice," said Total spokesman Iain Hutchison. "We've been
disappointed by the poor execution of the project ... we want all
issues to be resolved in order to get the project back on track and
completed as soon as possible," he said.
Unite union spokesman Ciaran Naidoo added: "At the top of the
agenda is obviously the reinstatement of the workers who have lost
their jobs at Lindsey as soon as possible."
Despite the talks, formal negotiations through the arbitration
agency ACAS have yet to be planned, an ACAS spokeswoman said.
Thousands of workers extended unofficial strikes in sympathy
with the Lindsey contractors Tuesday, although operations weren't
affected at any of the sites where walkouts were reported.
Other facilities affected by strikes included: Sellafield
nuclear power station, ConocoPhillips' (COP) 221,000-barrels-a-day
Humber refinery, Royal Dutch Shell PLC's (RDSB.LN)
240,000-barrels-a-day Stanlow refinery, RWE AG's (RWE.XE) Aberthaw
and Didcot A power stations, Drax Group PLC's (DRX.LN) Drax power
station, the U.K.'s largest coal-fired power plant, the Dragon
liquefied natural gas terminal in Wales, Saltend chemical plant and
at Ensus Group's biofuel plant under construction on Teesside.
"Unless action is taken fast to resolve this dispute, deadlock
will continue, sympathy strikes will escalate and the U.K.'s energy
supply will be under serious threat," said Graham Botwright,
managing partner at industrial relations consultancy The Gap
Partnership.
Botwright said progressive talks will only gain ground if a new
third-party arbiter is appointed, or even a new lead negotiator for
each side.
-By Angela Henshall and Lananh Nguyen, Dow Jones Newswires;
(4420) 7842 9285; angela.henshall@dowjones.com (James Herron and
Reza Amanat contributed to this story.)