Vivergo dispute rumbles on

The dispute at the Vivergo Fuels Ltd bioethanol plant is heading into a third month, with client, contractors and unions representing up to 430 engineering construction workers all at legal loggerheads.

Workers were locked out at the £200-million plant being built at the BP Saltend site, near Hull, when Vivergo a joint venture (JV) between BP, British Sugar and DuPont terminated a mechanical piping contract with Redhall Engineering Services Ltd (RESL).

Vivergo said it ended the contract on 14 March because RESL’s construction work was still only 69% completed, even though it was supposed to be finished by February 2011.

“New contracts will have to be placed in the future,” said a statement from Vivergo, “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.”

At this stage there is no contractor identified or in place to complete the work. This is likely to remain the case for some time

According to RESL’s parent Redhall Group, though, 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, which had previously valued the contract with Vivergo at around £30 million, said it would “vigorously pursue” the recovery of these costs, plus damages.

Redhall has also insisted that the employment contracts of the 316 manual workers and 134 staff workers on its contract had automatically transferred to Vivergo, or its replacement contractor in line with TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings [Protection of Employment]) regulations.

However, Vivergo has apparently denied any liability to employ the workers, stating: “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.”

Aker Process, part of Jacobs Engineering, has the overall contract to manage the Vivergo project. The GMB lists the other contractors as: DSL (scaffolding) with 63 manual workers; SEC Electrical, 40 manual workers; Syntex Engineering Services, 17 manual workers; FB Taylor, 10 manual workers; and Mammoet Cranes, 15 manual workers.

Bernard McAulay, Unite national officer for construction, has accused RESL of treating its workforce as an “industrial football [and] washing its hands of any responsibility to help the workers, many of whom have years of service”.

GMB general secretary Paul Kenny added: “Whoever was responsible for dreaming up this blatant attempt to deny British workers their rights [under TUPE] should be removed from operational control at the BP bioethanol fuel site in Hull.”

The unions vowed to continue protests at the site and with legal actions following the collapse of talks convened by arbitration body ACAS. This was despite a £1.2-million settlement between RESL and former employees at the BP Saltend site.

According to Redhall, the settlement closed off the potential for future claims arising from its former employees and involved no admission of liability.

However, GMB senior organiser Les Dobbs said only some of the workers had accepted what he described as “compromise agreements” with Redhall. Others, he said, still want the GMB to take legal action on their behalf.

It must have cost up to £1 million in man-hours to have hundreds of skilled people standing around while the contractors argued about who did what

“The money being paid out was just wages,” commented Dobbs, who accused the employer “of trying to starve our members into submission”.

Dobbs believes the workers and the contract schedule are the victims of continuing spats between various parties on the project. For example, he said, there had been arguments between Aker Solutions and Redhall over who had responsibility for thelighting at the site.

’It must have cost up to £1 million in man-hours [to] have hundreds of skilled people standing around while the contractors argued about who was doing what,’ he said.

But the unions are also now blaming BP and Vivergo for the continuing dispute.

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

“BP and Vivergo know that the site cannot 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 the GMB senior organiser.