Far East welders 'to nab' Doosan power plant jobs
3 May 2011
London – DoosanBabcock plans to recruit over 100 welders from the Far East to work on power plant projects in Yorkshire, even though this job category is no longer on the official UK skills shortages list, claims the GMB trade union.
The engineering construction workers union is to meet Doosan Babcock on 6 May to insist that it fill vacancies with UK-based unemployed welders. The projects involve the upcoming repair and maintenance work in the summer outages on the Drax and Ferrybridge power stations in North Yorkshire.
According to the GMB, it has identified a pool of 500 skilled UK-based welders, who are unemployed and looking for work. Many, it said, are from the traditional industrial areas like Tyneside, Teesside, Wearside, Merseyside, Yorkshire and Humberside, South Wales and the Clyde and other parts of the UK.
Jimmy Skivington GMB regional officer who met the company on this matter said “GMB is concerned that, despite several meetings with us about their legal responsibilities, DoosanBabcock still intends to fill some of their jobs for welders on these two sites with non-EU labour.
“This is despite this category of welders having been removed from the most recent official Skills Shortage list for the UK. They have advised us that they have already identified a workforce from a non EU country and plan to offer them over 100 jobs.
Skivington said the employer had failed to show evidence of efforts to locate UK-based labour, such as job adverts in local, national and trade press and submitted vacancy notifications to the Job Centre Plus network.
The union has also advised its suitably qualified members to approach the company to apply for one of these positions. Almost 500 members subsequently applied and the GMB is seeking reports from these workers on how their applications was treated by the company.
“However Doosan’s advised GMB at our most recent meeting on 1st April that they are keeping this plan as a contingency. GMB is now concerned that an apparent breach of the regulations may be about to happen and have written to Government Ministers and local MP’s to alert them to this,” said the union organiser.
“GMB meet the company for the third time on 6th May on this matter. GMB are seeking support from Ministers and MP’s to ensure our members who have applied for these vacancies receive fair treatment, and that the company meets its legal and moral obligations to the local community and the UK based workforce as a whole.
“This whole issue pinpoints the need to step up apprenticeships for the highly skilled engineering construction workforce that will be required to build the power stations and other infrastructure projects needed in the UK. With almost 1 million young workers on the dole the Government must insist that employers create and fill these apprenticeship places.”
