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21 April, 2008
Unite the union, ICEM’s largest British affiliate, will take 48-hour strike action next week, 27-28 April, at Ineos Group Holdings’ Grangemouth petrochemicals complex near Falkirk, Scotland.
The action will come due to company intentions to close the final pension scheme to new workers, and planned imposition of other adverse work terms. The polyolefins and oil derivatives plants at Grangemouth employ 1,200 workers, the vast majority of them Unite members.
In late March, workers balloted for strike action. That vote passed with a 98% affirmative for industrial action.
Unite is hopeful negotiations will resume this week, but will only return to the bargaining table if the company signals it’s intent to move away from shutting the pension scheme to new hires and removing the proposed and negative work terms. In talks last Friday, 18 April, Ineos refused to budge from its proposals, causing United to issue the strike notice.
“The company is profitable, and the pension scheme in its present form is well funded and affordable,” said United National Secretary Phil McNulty, who also is an ICEM Vice President. “The changes to the scheme Ineos are proposing are unreasonable, unnecessary, and have forced our members at Grangemouth to take industrial action for the first time,” he added.
Ineos is seeking to withdraw £40 million from the pension fund, and Unite said other changes at the 200,000-barrels-per-day refinery could cost workers up to £10,000 annually. Grangemouth manufactures petrochemicals for uses in all manners of transport fuels and other uses.
Since the strike notice was issues three days ago, the company has begun shutdown procedures at the complex near Glasgow. The shutdown, 48-hour strike, and subsequent start-up are expected to crimp fuel supplies across Scotland, England, and Northern Ireland. Ineos operates the petrochemicals complex with only a week’s supply of refined fuels as reserves.
Ineos was created in 1998 through a management buyout. In December 2005, the UK-based company purchased Grangemouth from BP’s Innovene chemicals division. The US$9 billion deal also brought the company petrochemicals plants in Lavéra, France, as well as seven chemical manufacturing operations in Europe and nine in North America.