WILDCAT FLAP

Last week’s week wave of wildcat strikes affecting power stations, oil refineries, nuclear plants and other engines of Babylon - should have been a wet dream for the workerist left but was unfortunately complicated by the adoption as a slogan of Gordon Brown’s pre-credit crunch boast of “British Jobs for British Workers”. This was enough to throw sections of the left into disarray, with one tiny crypto-trotskyite splinter group Workers Liberty even organising a picket of UNITE’s London HQ.

Protests at the TOTAL run Lindsay oil refinery centred around subcontractors IREM deciding to employ Italian and Portuguese workers. No doubt IREM hoped to save a few quid by bypassing industry wide pay rates and bringing in cheaper labour. One of international capital’s main weapons against workers is the ‘race to the bottom’ normally involving jobs being exported, like call-centres bring relocated to Bangladesh). But the problem with construction is that it’s impossible to export – if you want that power station built here you are going to need local labour.

Of course the construction industry in the U.K has in recent years been remarkably multi-ethnic – with workers drawn from all across the whole of the EU and beyond. In the boom-time this really only affected unskilled labourers. But as the recession bites and work becomes scarcer competition kicks in higher up the skills ladder. And that is essentially what the dispute is about.

The picture on the ground was confused – firstly by the mainstream press who insisted that the strike was largely anti-foreigner rather than anti-boss. In fact BNP organisers were kicked off picket lines early on at Lindsay, with one worker commenting on strike web forum www.bearfacts.co.uk “There’s nowt working class about the BNP and if the strike had been about anything else where they couldn’t stick their spin on it then they wouldn’t be supporting it. The strike's anti-racist. It’s the bosses being racist and fascist. If the BNP turn up at our picket when we walk out then I know a few of us won’t be standing for it and will tell them to f**k off in no uncertain terms.”. Another South Wales refinery worker said “In the engineering industry, especially in oil and gas, the job takes you worldwide. Who can blame foreign workers, who also face threats of redundancy and unemployment, who just want to work and support their family? What happened to international worker solidarity?”