The rash of walk-outs at energy installations across the country is regrettable, but not wholly surprising. The workers have realised that Gordon Brown’s fine talk about British jobs for British workers was an undeliverable promise; empty rhetoric delivered with no higher object in mind than to get a round of applause at the 2007 Labour party conference.
Back in those days, of course, things were different. Jobs were still in reasonable supply, while Brown himself was riding high in the polls, still enjoying the honeymoon that ended only a week later at the Conservative conference in Blackpool.
Now thousands of jobs are being lost on a daily basis and it must be increasingly apparent to the workers that Brown hasn’t a clue what to do about it.
Total UK must come in for criticism, too. In times such as these, for a multinational to award a contract to an Italian firm without making provision for the employment of local labour is crassly insensitive. Any financial benefit Total has derived from the deal will have been more than outweighed by the loss of goodwill.
Brown has always been full of rhetoric and he may have got away with it in the past. However, even die-hard Labour supporters will start to review his comments and eventually realise that New labour is, the party of say something, do nothing, unless of course they are gambling with our money.
I agree, Total were at best insensitive, they will have lost more in goodwill than they could possible have gained in a financial sense.
David as an ex construction worker it’s plain to me that it’s all about money – to employ foreign with the consequent costs of accommodation, subsistance and travel makes no sense unless they are getting cheaper labour than they can employ in Britain. It also cannot be claimed that British workers are now strike prone ..
But there is something else that still needs to be addressed in that British construction workers – since Jude the Obscure have been at the mercy of a system that employs people who do the job and then are thrown on the dole –and their own devices – one of our demands was that there should be a register of construction workers that helps to try and match workers to jobs.
Lastly it used to be that all the major sites had their own agreement – the major contribution to the number of strikes as every body played catch up.. this situation was ended with the national agreement on a national rate and conditions made between the construction employers and the unions.
The circumstances surrounding the Total refinery contractors puts years of struggle for some kind of settled situation in doubt and is dangerous not only for the unions, but the employers and the government unless they wish for what was called anarchy (although just basic struggle) of “the bad old days.
On top of that the case of the Viking shipping company which allowed in Britain (but not in other EC countries) foreign employers to employ who they like, at what rates they like is the main problem for Mandelson and the government as they seek to maintain the boast of the workers of Britain being the least protected workers in the EC.