NAECI to be smashed at Fawley Oil Refinery?A callout to the Rank and File
We need Rank and File trade union members and activists to attend the protest and leafleting of Fawley Oil Refinery, Hampshire, gate No.2, at 6.00am Weds 27thJune. The NAECI is under threat and is being attacked. In the 3rd quarter of 2012, starting from the beginning of July, Esso, whose US parent company is Exxon/Mobil, is going to start a major shutdown/turnaround on the Cat Cracker plant, which will involve hundreds of workers working shifts around the clock 7 days a week. Historically, the NAECI unions, Unite & GMB, would by now have negotiated terms for this special job under NAECI, so that everyone was happy and the job was completed on time. Not this time though. Unite have had no talks and still have had no answer to their question to Esso about whether the Cat Cracker is even to be under NAECI terms. It doesn’t look good.
Esso haven’t been a NAECI client for a number of years now. Now they are engaging a German contractor called Voight Ermo who, according to the Engineering Contractors Industry Association (ECIA) members’ directory 2012, are not even members of the contractors’ side that makes up the NAECI. They won’t confirm if they are employing workers under NAECI. We haven’t got a problem with workers from wherever being employed under theNAECI. It’s when the boss class clients and contractors trawl this country and mainland Europe, looking for downtrodden workers so that they can be exploited even more. This is a race to the bottom for the workers as opposed to the race to the top for the super profits ‘earned’ by the clients and their crony contractors.
This is the the thin end of the wedge, it starts by having a non NAECI client, then a nonNAECI contractor on a major petro-chem project, employing desperate exploited workers on whatever terms and conditions, you can bet a pound to a pinch of shit that they won’t better NAECI. Then the other NAECI clients and contractors take notice and see what Esso got away with down at Fawley, so then they think – why are we paying NAECI terms and conditions for our workers? That is how they make their profits – by extracting surplus value over and above your hourly rate; the less your hourly rate, the more surplus value for the boss, which means bigger profits. It is that simple.
This then spreads to the new build power stations, to the M&E and civil construction National Agreements on projects such as the £17billion Crossrail contract. And then we all are on the race to the bottom, with then of course the boss class throwing in the classic dodge of playing one group of workers off against another group of workers, in the hope we won’t see that the problem lies with the clients and contractors and not our fellow workers.
Latest news is that Redhalls are offering long term temporary work at Fawley forpipefitters, welders, platers, riggers. Not NAECI, but a one off hourly rate for daily travellers with £2 an hour above that for lodging workers. It is starting brothers and sisters, what with the blacklist operating at Fawley with local union activists being excluded, Unite have got only one contracting shop steward in Fawley with no H&S reps. It is worse for the GMB who haven’t got any!
FFS we need to be there, see you all on the Weds 27th June 6.00am, Fawley Oil Refinery, gate No.2. |
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