Foreign worker protests return
By Ian Dunt
Protests against EU rules for foreign workers have continued today with demonstrations outside two power stations.
The unions GMB and Unite called for members to protest outside the sites of Staythorpe power station in Nottinghamshire and Grain power station in Kent.
Contractor Alstom is using sub contractors FNN and Mon Presior at Staythorpe and sub contractors Remak and Zre Kalowice at the Isle of Grain.
Alstom told the trade unions in January 2009 that they plan to use 250 Polish workers, employed at Alstom’s own execution centre in Poland, to build the next phase of Staythorpe and that they will not be employing any UK workers.
Union activists are intent on maintaining momentum on the issue after the wildcat strikes at Lindsey refinery in Lincolnshire ended earlier this month.
“We have an imbalance in the equal treatment of work,” GMB’s European officer, Kathleen Walker-Shaw, told politics.co.uk.
“The EU directive on protection against exploitation has had a hole blown threw it.”
Activists plan to target as many projects which deny British labourers work on UK engineering construction sites, and yesterday representatives of GMB and Unite lobbied parliament to push for UK exemptions from EU law.
Union workers said the current problems stem from two European court cases – Viking and Laval – where a 1996 EU directive on posting workers was fundamentally changed.
The 1996 directive said foreign workers should be paid at the level of the country they were going to work in. But the court cases established a minimum wage and health and safety level across the EU instead – opening the doors to contractors using the internal market to undercut domestic wages.
Keith Hazlewood, GMB national secretary said: “Following the dispute at the Lindsey oil refinery the trade unions are pleased that our engineering construction members’ grievances are beginning to be recognised.
“There is still some way to go but at least people are beginning to understand what we have been saying.”
He added: “We now plan to follow this up with a series of meetings and demonstrations to get action to stop UK workers being denied work on UK projects as is happening at Staythorpe and Isle of Grain.”
Union workers vociferously reject accusations of xenophobia at the Lindsey strike or the surrent campaign, saying the debate is about trade union rights.
“That is something we have been very, very clear about – that this is about equal treatment for workers,” Ms Walker-Shaw told politics.co.uk.
“We’ll have no truck with anyone placing these arguments at the door of trade unions. UK trade unions have put a lot of effort into recruiting migrant workers so they’re not exploited and they’re welcomed into our country on the same basis as us – enjoying the profits of their labour.”
She added: “The history of the trade union movement is of an international movement.”
The Lindsay strike ended after arbitration service ACAS managed to secure a compromise involving 101 new jobs for British workers.
