Vivergo workers target BP AGM over "lock out"

London – Unions are to stage a protest at the BP AGM on 14 April over the plight of 430 workers who had been employed on the construction of the Vivergo biofuels plant in Hull.

The planned protest follows the collapse of negotiations at ACAS on 10 April, which claims the GMB trade union, ended when the employers left the talks to end the the ’lock out’ of the workers since 14 March.

“The employers walked out of the ACAS talks although the unions were prepared to continue talking to try to resolve this dispute,” said Les Dobbs, GMB senior organiser.

“BP and Vivergo know that the site can not be finished until the work done by the Redhall workforce restarts. Unions want guarantees that this work will be offered to the locked out workers - who have TUPE rights to this work - but we have had no such guarantees,” added Dobbs.

BP and Vivergo are trying to frustrate the TUPE rights of these workers, the GMB official continued:

“These workers have every right to stage lawful peaceful protest outside the site at this frustration of their TUPE rights and they have full support of GMB in these protests. It is not true that many of them have new jobs. They have had no income since early March.”

On 11 March, Vivergo Fuels Ltd terminated a contract with Redhall Engineering Solutions Ltd (RESL) for the fabrication and installation of pipework for a new £200-million bioethanol plant on the BP Saltend site, near Hull.

RESL had fallen significantly behind the agreed contractual delivery programme, Vivergo said 21 March. The mechanical & piping works, it said, should have been 100% complete by February 2011, but to date, the construction work is only 69% complete.

According to RESL parent Redhall Group, since March 2010 it had completed 78% of the original contract plus variations, adding that around £14 million of costs on the contract were still unpaid.

Redhall will “vigorously pursue the recovery of these costs plus damages although the outcome of any settlement will be subject to normal legal process,” the group’s 14 March statement added.

Vivergo is now assessing what will be required to complete the work on site – a process that could take some time given the nature and scale of the project.

“New contracts will have to be placed in the future but at this stage there is no contractor organisation identified or in place to complete the work. This is likely to remain the case for some time,” the JV said.

The GMB trade union said Vivergo awarded the overall contract to manage the project to Aker Process, part of Jacobs Engineering. The engineering construction workforce, it noted, is employed by a range of contractors under the National Agreement for the Engineering Construction Industry.

Redhall was awarded the contract for mechanical piping within the scope of work in February 2010 with 316 manual workers and 134 staff workers, added the GMB.

Other contractors, it said, are DSL (Deborah Services Ltd) Scaffolding with 63 manual workers, SEC Electrical 40 manual workers, Syntex Engineering Services with 17 manual workers, FB Taylor with 10 manual workers and Mammoet Cranes with 15 manual workers.

When the union members turned up for work last week, Aker Process Ltd on behalf of Vivergo denied any liability to employ the transferred staff.

This, said the union, has left GMB members “in an impossible situation in that they have uncertainty of employment and are not receiving wages [on 14 March]. Workers from the other contractors have been sent home on full pay.”

Meanwhile, the Unite trade union has threatened legal action on behalf of the ’locked out’ construction workers, has has accused Redhall of treating its workforce “disgracefully” and using them as an “industrial football.

Bernard McAulay, Unite national officer for construction, said: “Redhall [is] washing its hands of any responsibility to help the workers many of whom have years of service … “This employer has a choice, it can sit down with the unions and settle this through negotiation or it faces hundreds of legal cases against it and a massive bill.”

For its part, RESL said the workforce employed on the site have been transferred under TUPE regulations to Vivergo – a JV between BP, British Sugar and DuPont – or any successor contractor, RESL parent Redhall Group said on 14 March.

The GMB, meanwhile, has called on BP, DuPont and British Sugar to get the engineering construction workers back to work on bioethanol plant at Saltend – raising the spectre of it becoming another Lindsey-type dispute.

In 2009 Lindsey Oil Refinery was involved in a bitter dispute over what unions alleged was the exclusion of UK workers from the site to be replaced with lower paid overseas workers.

“We sympathise with the situation of the RESL workers but stress that our priority lies with our business - here at Vivergo Fuels Ltd - and the many hundreds of long-term jobs which are dependent on it,” said Vivergo.

As announced early last year, Redhall’s contract had encompassed a scope with a total value of £30 million, with most of the work to be completed in 2010. The company had anticipated trading profits in the current financial year for the Vivergo contract to be in the region of £1.7 million.

“Our key contract win with Vivergo Fuels which reinforces our stated strategy of focusing on our core markets and competencies,” Redhall chairman David Jackson said at the time. “This will be one of the largest bio-ethanol plants in the UK and strengthens our position in the energy market.”