Government condemns wildcat strikes
Updated on 01 February 2009
Gordon Brown and Lord Mandelson have condemned strikers protesting against foreign labour.
A dispute over energy firm Total's use of Italian and Portuguese workers led to an unofficial walkout at the Lindsey Oil Refinery at North Killingholme, North Lincolnshire. Unions claim Britons were not given any opportunity to apply for the posts.
Hundreds of contract workers at the Sellafield nuclear site in Cumbria will hold an early morning mass meeting to discuss taking industrial action, and workers at the Heysham nuclear power station in Lancashire are also expected to decide whether to join the walk-outs in support of workers in Lincolnshire.
Lord Mandelson put the Government on collision course with the strikers by insisting Total are entitled to draft in hundreds of foreign workers under EU rules.
But health secretary Alan Johnson - a former union leader - said rulings from the European court had "distorted" the law, in what could spell a cabinet split on the issue.
Total said in a statement: "We operate, and will continue to operate, under UK domestic law and the common European rules which apply to UK companies operating elsewhere in Europe and European companies operating in the UK.
"Where sub-contracts are let, firms from both within the UK and elsewhere in the EU can bid for the work. Where we sub-contract, we do so on a fair and non-discriminatory basis, and the wage rates are the same as other equivalent jobs on the site."
The Prime Minister was accused of "inflaming" the row today after he condemned the outbreak of wild-cat strikes as "indefensible".
The Prime Minister also defended his pledge of "British jobs for British workers", insisting he had been referring to improving the skills of the UK workforce.
Shadow foreign secretary William Hague said Mr Brown's "British jobs for British workers" pledge was "unbelievably ridiculous and silly".
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