Hundreds of staff ‘defy Grangemouth demand’
D-day for workers over ultimatum by owner Ineos
HundRedS of workers at the Grangemouth oil plant have rejected new pay and conditions put forward by management, according to union chiefs, raising the prospect of a continued shutdown of Scotland’s largest refinery.
unite said it had received written assurances from more than 500 employees that they would not accept proposed changes to their pensions, overtime and redundancy payments.
Managers said yesterday that they would only reopen the site if enough workers agree to the new conditions. Billionaire owner Jim Ratcliffe yesterday warned it could close permanently if not.
Owner Ineos said at least 250 workers – about 18 per cent of the 1,350 employees at the site – had agreed to the changes by Saturday night. If both figures are accurate, that leaves about 600 to make their decision before a deadline of 6pm today.
Petrochemical giant Ineos closed the refinery and neighbouring petrochemical plant last week after union members said they would strike en masse, though industrial action was later called off.
the firm had said the plant would not reopen unless unions pledged not to strike again this year. But yesterday, Mr Ratcliffe said it could close if workers did not accept proposed changes.
“this is not a bluff. the clock is ticking,” he said. “Grangemouth could have a future, but that is absolutely in the hands of the workers. If we go down the wrong road, then I’m afraid this story will not have a happy ending.”
A protracted shutdown, or even closure, is likely to lead to fears over fuel shortages and hikes in petrol and diesel prices. the plant provides 80 per cent of
Monday 21 october 2013 Scotland’s petrol, and processes more than 10 per cent of North Sea oil.
Yesterday, Unite published a strongly worded advert in a number of Scottish Sunday newspapers headed: “A message to the people of Scotland”.
It described Grangemouth as the “powerhouse” of Scotland’s economy and urged management to open the plant, adding: “This is a company out of control. This is holding Scotland to ransom.”
First Minister Alex Salmond said the situation should be resolved quickly. “I think Unite should give a no-strike, withoutstrings guarantee,” he said.
“Once that is done, Ineos should fire up the plant and then the various discussions, negotiations, consultations on terms and conditions, should take place against the background of a working plant, not a plant that is lying cold.”
The Swiss-based firm, whose shareholders are due to meet tomorrow, last night told The Scotsman it still hoped a majority would sign up to the new conditions. A spokesman would not be drawn on how many workers had to accept for the plant to start up again.
Unite, however, angrily rejected the suggestion that the plant could be run on less than a full workforce.
Ineos has said ending its final salary pension scheme is critical to ensuring a future for the huge facility and stemming losses of £579 million in the past four years. It is currently losing about £10m per month from the site, it claims.
Tom Crotty, a director at Ineos, told The Scotsman: “We briefed everyone on Thursday and they have until 6pm on Monday to give their response to our offer. We hadn’t been expecting many responses over the weekend, so it’s a good sign to receive 250 by Saturday alone.
“We are encouraged by the fact there are a lot of people who recognise our key message, that are this is all about the longterm competitiveness of the site and that if we don’t make these changes, the site won’t exist. We just can’t compete with the US, China, the Middle East, and we can’t live in a bubble pretending they’re not there.
“Unfortunately, the union has not been accepting change and if that carries on, the jobs here won’t exist.
“And these are very well paid jobs. What we’re offering here is still a very good pension scheme, better than most, to replace the final salary scheme.”
Employees who accept the new terms and conditions will be given compensation of between £2,500 and £15,000, with the majority at the top of that range, Mr Crotty said. Workers who do not agree will have up to 60 days as part of a consultation period to sign a new contract before they lose their jobs, says the firm.
Ineos has already warned the plant will close in 2017 without fresh investment and changes to workers’ terms and conditions.
Mr Crotty went on to suggest that the site could be reopened without the agreement of the entire workforce, though it was likely they would need a majority of workers. About 700 staff work at the chemical plant and about 500 at the refinery.
He said: “We’ve made no particular decision about restarting yet. A lot depends on the numbers and capability to run the plant. We have to have the confidence we have enough people to keep it running.”
He added: “Clearly what we’d like to have happen is we get sufficient numbers of our employees voting for this change, which would then allow us to say we have the confidence to restart the plant and carry on with our new plan. If that doesn’t happen, our shareholders will be reflecting on that on Tuesday after the closure of this offer. And then we’ll take some decisions.”
About 400 employees, some with children and family, attended a rally outside the plant yesterday in heavy rain and heard from speakers from Unite and other bodies such as the Scottish Trades Union Congress – though Ineos disputed the attendance figures.
Site convener Mark Lyon told the crowd: “This is far from a typical industrial dispute. There are old-fashioned words that come to mind like ‘fairness’ and ‘equality’, and that’s what we want.
“Incredibly, our members have been served notice that they will be sacked in 45 days unless they bend to the will of Jim Ratcliffe’s Ineos. This is a move to sack one of the most skilled workforces in the country. It’s crazy, and we won’t let it happen on our watch.”
Ineos has said it needs an assurance that there will be no industrial action due to “safety concerns” about restarting the plant.
Unite Scottish secretary Pat Rafferty told the crowd: “The company now needs to get back to the table, as the First Minister has called for, to stop this imposition and negotiate, and that’s in all our interests.”
DAvID Cameron will not win the general election merely by dismissing Ed Miliband’s promise to bring in an energy price freeze as a “1970s socialist” idea, Margaret Thatcher’s advertising guru has warned.
Lord Saatchi, a former Conservative Party chairman, cautioned against underestimating the potency of the Opposition leader’s argument on wealth inequality and energy bills.
Mr Miliband has said the Labour party would freeze gas and electricity bills for every home and business in the UK for 20 months if it wins the 2015 election. In response, the Prime Minister has repeatedly deployed a “same old Labour” line, and in his conference speech this month he vowed to crush “1970s-style socialism”.
British Gas last week became the second of the Big Six energy companies to hike its bills by 9.2 per cent, following Perth-based SSE, which announced an 8.2 per cent rise a week earlier.
The latest round of price increases sparked fears other suppliers may follow suit. Smaller supplier Co-operative Energy also said last week that it would increase its bills, although by the lesser amount of 4.5 per cent.
Lord Saatchi said the last few decades had seen the creation of “global cartels” in areas such as banking and energy, where there was a “huge imbalance of power between the individual customer and the giant corporation”.
Writing in a Sunday newspaper, he said: “The overwhelming power of money in such a climate is a dangerous moment for Conservatism. What scares people most is soon money will talk in health as well as everything else … People may conclude they need someone to protect them from that kind of ‘free market’, such as, perhaps, the state. This is why Labour thinks they have struck gold with a state price freeze on energy.”
Lord Saatchi said Tories should not be so quick to welcome Mr Miliband’s apparent shift to the Left. “Many Conservatives rejoice at this news, that Labour is again about to sign ‘the longest suicide note in history’,” he wrote. “Is that true? It’s been 21 years since the Conservative Party won an election.
“You hear it said that the party was unlucky to have a succession of five leaders with insufficient appeal to voters. That seems statistically unlikely. A more plausible explanation is that the party has lacked a marching tune people can respond to. This might be because it has underestimated the power of socialism.”
Meanwhile, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby called the latest wave of hikes “inexplicable”.
The senior bishop in the Church of England, himself a former oil executive, said: “The impact on people, particularly on low incomes, is going to be really severe in this, and the companies have to justify fully what they are doing.
“I do understand when people feel that this is inexplicable, and I can understand people being angry about it, because having spent years on a low income as a clergyman I know what it is like when your household budget is blown apart by a significant extra fuel bill and your anxiety levels become very high. That is the reality of it.”
The archbishop urged firms to be “conscious of their social obligations”, saying they had to to “behave with generosity and not merely to maximise opportunity”.