Thousands of construction workers in oil refineries and other major utilities sites are on strike.
There were mass meetings in the Lindsey and Conoco refinery sites in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire today and Socialist Party members were well received with 18 copies of the Socialist sold.
The main issue is not that “foreign” workers are being brought in by the employers, as reported in the media, but that there are thousands of unemployed construction workers.
The Socialist Party is raising the demand that any worker should be part of the national engineering construction agreements that cover the wages and conditions on the sites.
We are also calling for an unemployment registrar to be set up under union control that can supply labour to the sites when that is needed.
The reason for the strikes is that the employers have awarded the contracts to an Italian firm that has brought in labour which is not part of the national agreements.
A six-strong strike committee has been set up with a Socialist Party member on the committee. At the time of writing the strikes are spreading like wild fire according to the BBC, currently covering something like sixteen sites from Scotland to Wales and from Northern Ireland to Merseyside.
