Who is fungible and who is not?
rdan
The Guardian discusses fungibles. Americans are not used to this directness of private company foreign exchanges of workers. We have relied on visas and encouraging low wage illegal immigration to accomplish this task. It seems to me we will have to get used to a greater variety of hiring practices from private, ‘American’ multi-national companies. How does one vote their ‘party’ when government is all you got, and such change is rapidly going forward so ‘efficiently’. It is how the process is structured, but we still have old agenda arguments instead of looking at the new rules. (Actually rules simply hidden from view…how they stay hidden is beyond my understanding)
The government called in mediators from Acas last night in an urgent attempt to end the dispute over the exclusion of British workers from construction contracts which led to a wave of wildcat strikes across the country yesterday.
The attempt to halt the protest came as it emerged that hundreds more workers were ready to join the nationwide strike action. Bosses at Sellafield nuclear power plant confirmed that 900 contractors will vote on a walkout on Monday morning in solidarity with oil industry contractors in Lincolnshire which is at the heart of the dispute after around 300 new jobs were taken by Italian and Portuguese workers.
The conciliation service was called in after around 3,000 workers at oil and power plants across the UK staged unofficial strikes in support of workers at the Lindsey refinery at North Killingholme. The TUC claimed the refinery owner, Total, had made an “apparent attempt to undercut the wages, conditions and union representation of existing staff”.
In angry scenes outside plants from Scotland to south Wales, union leaders spoke out against European workers taking construction jobs in the oil and energy industry ahead of British workers. Outside the Lindsey refinery, some protesters called on their colleagues to march on Downing Street.
Shop steward Kenny Ward told the crowd they had to stand together and take on the “greedy employer”. He said: “I’m a victim, you are a victim, there are thousands in this country that are victims to this discrimination, this victimization of the British worker.”
Total had put a contract out to tender for a £200m construction project with five UK firms and two European contractors. The Italian company IREM won the contract and supplied its own permanent workforce. It is understood 100 Italian and Portuguese workers are already on site and 300 more are expected next month.
In apparently co-ordinated action, 700 workers at the Grangemouth oil refinery near Falkirk walked out, and 400 more downed tools at the Wilton chemical site in Cleveland. Early morning protests flared at at least eight other facilities in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.