Unions threaten Total warfare

London - Trade unions are giving seven-days notice to contractors that they will conduct an official strike ballot of engineering construction members working in the building and maintenance of Britain's power stations and oil refinery sites. The ballot will run from 11 Aug and end on 1 Sept, with any agreed industrial action to follow shortly after that date.

GMB members working for contractors at the following sites will be balloted: BP FPS Grangemouth and Ineos Grangemouth in Scotland, Sellafield, Shell UK Stanlow and Staythorpe RWE in Nottinghamshire and Chevron Pembroke and Aberthaw in Wales. Unite will also ballot its members on the same sites with the same timetable.

GMB, and Unite claim that the employer's body the Engineering Construction Industry Association (ECIA) has rejected their demands for 'improvements' to the National Agreement for the Engineering Construction Industry (NAECI). The measures, claim the unions would deliver fairness and long term stability to the sector - ECIA has not  as yet responded to Process Engineering's enquiries regarding these claims.

Paul Kenny, GMB general secretary said: " The objective of this dispute is to eliminate discrimination, unfair treatment and exploitation in this industry of workers where ever they come from. A robust and transparent auditing process is the only way of forcing these employers to break from their bad habits. This is not a skills issue, this is not a foreign worker issue, it is about fairness and adhering to agreed standards."

Phil Davies, GMB national secretary added: "The anger, frustration and mistrust between the employers and union members has been made a lot worse by the action of Total in reneging on the deal that led to the settlement of the unofficial dispute at Lindsay.

"Total management now claim that the agreement to provide work on site for those facing redundancy at Lindsay was a 'mistake' ... That is why GMB is insisting on pre award auditing to ensure that contractors can pay agreed rates."