The Socialist 6 April 2011

Cuts wreck people's lives

Cuts wreck people's lives

Tory health plans are sick

Bosses prepare for war on public sector workers

Labour Link won't save jobs and services

Housing benefit cuts start to bite

Bristol meeting - The battle of our lives has begun

On the move in London to fight the cuts

Fight the cuts with TUSC: more than just a 'protest vote'

Austerity measures take away the basics

Labour 'campaigning' - casework style

Fast news

1981 Brixton riots

Ireland's economy on the brink

Jordan: 'Reforms' fail to halt growing opposition

Saltend lock-out - Solidarity strike spreads

Call for strikes to stop Ford attack on pensions

Birmingham prison officers determined to fight privatisation

Prison officers fight prison privatisation: Interview with POA assistant secretary, Joe Simpson

Teachers and council workers strike together in Tower Hamlets

Leeds Unison - fighting the cuts

Pay cuts provoke strike

School students stage anti-cuts strike in Dundee

Leicester: still angry with Clegg

Save Hackney youth services!

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Saltend lock-out - Solidarity strike spreads

On Wednesday 6 April, hundreds of engineering construction workers at several sites around the country will be taking strike action in solidarity with the 400 Redhall workers locked out from BP Saltend, Hull.

Alistair Tice

Into a fourth week of being locked out, after BP/Vivergo ended Redhall's contract at the bio-ethanol plant, a mass meeting at the gates on 4 April voted unanimously to call for a national one-day strike of NAECI (national agreement - Blue Book) sites.

Pickets were sent out to several jobs around the country. On Monday, Redhall workers from Hull and Teeside were boosted by maintenance workers from Nippon-Gohsei and Interserve who work at BP Saltend refusing to cross 'protest' lines at the gates.

Their shop steward, Trevor Grewar, a Socialist Party member, gave a solidarity message of support to applause. Scaffolders and electricians on "gardening duty", ie stood down on basic pay, will refuse to cross picket lines if/when they are called back to work.

Last week, Vivergo, 40% owned by BP, sent a letter to 500 workers at Saltend saying that they are not "tearing up the national agreement" and it is not a "lock-out".

The letter is dated 1 April but this is no April Fools joke!

They have stated that they intend to split the Redhall contract up between four contracting companies, thus fragmenting the contract and putting TUPE (transfer of employment) rights into doubt, and have given no undertaking to take back the locked out workers.

Redhall has offered £3,300 a worker but only on condition that they do not protest any longer. The three grand is monies owed, and not even all of that, which has already been rejected at a mass meeting.

The GMB and Unite trade unions have both made the lock-out official. And a hardship fund has been set up with levies collected at many sites.

But rightly the Redhall workers have demanded that industrial action be escalated.

By this lock-out, BP/Vivergo/Redhall have torn up the Blue Book. If they get away with it at Saltend, then employers elsewhere will try the same thing.

This means that this lock-out is a threat to all construction workers and pressure must be brought to bear on all the industry employers.

As lock-out committee member Keith Gibson said after Monday's vote to spread the strike: "The only way work will restart on that project is if all Redhall workers are taken back.

"If a one-day strike doesn't shift the bosses, then we will call for the whole industry to shut down."