Ineos closes part of Grangemouth ....

[TheOstrich]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/news ... -site.html

This has been a developing story for a good couple of weeks, but now seems to have reached a climax.

Union bashing by fat-cat capitalist millionaire?
Fat-cat bashing by militant unions?
Greedy workers and subbies on > £50K per annum - or is that a scurrilous lie?
One in the eye for Alex Salmond and independence?

A lot of strands to this ......

[Workingman]

Is this a foretaste of what will inevitably happen at St Fergus and Aberdeen as North Sea oil and gas dwindles away?

The reserves will disappear completely, one day, and as they get scarcer the facilities to process them will become obsolete.

[pederito1]

If the Unions win and the Scottish Government steps in I can foresee a bundle of trouble with the militant unions elsewhere.

[Suff]

Whilst the SNP has very strong Labour links, Salmond is not going to let anything like this derail his Devolution express.

Anything which talks about 2,400 workers taking 2% of GDP out of the Scots economy is going to cause fairly extreme action in one way or another.

Unite are a pretty militant bunch and need a good slap. Wages are very high for Scotland, forget UK average, Scots wages are lower and I doubt conditions are that bad. But Scots union members have a bad record working with hard headed private companies.

The major problem is that the EU is currently awash with refined petrochemicals because of the reduction in use of them. Hence we could lose 14% of the UK's refining capacity and still source the fuel at the same price or even cheaper from within the EU.

Personally I think this is short sighted.

Then again, personally, I would nationalise the place, sack all the workers and then make everyone apply for new jobs at the plant at half the wage. Just to get the point over about how well off you can be and still be a complete idiot over it.

But I'm a BAD man. Oh and a capitalist too.

But, when you think about it, closing Grangemouth to resolve the issue and re-opening it is the best option we can think of. Because if we don't resolve it, then it will be closed for good and all those workers will be thrown on a labour market awash with petrochemical workers. Perhaps they could find a better paying job overseas??

[pederito1]

So that is the way to deal with militant unions and possibly overpaid unskilled workers.

[Workingman]

So, after all the willie whanging and "my dong is bigger then your dong", the workers get to keep the jobs they already had and the plant, which was already open, stays open.

[Suff]

Only because the company stood firm and "contemplated" closing the plant if the workers didn't recognise that they were better off working.

You have to have lived in Scotland with the Labour strongholds and the corruption to understand working attitudes to companies, profits and pay. Some of the very worst of the 1970's Union attitudes are still alive and well in Scotland.

If I were one of the contract workforce in Grangemouth, who are not in the Union, I would be seriously annoyed with my Employee Unionites. I suspect that Ineos will work harder to remove the remainder of the employees and replace them with contractors.

This attitude that a company making profits is somehow bad is just so wrong. These people have no touch with reality. A company which does not make money does not survive. If it does not survive, then you, as an employee, do not have a job.

Many people find it hard to do joined up thinking. High petrol prices and high airline taxes and a reduction in truck activity due to the economic recession means that less fuel is being used. As supply grows to meet demand, then it must shrink when demand drops. In the EU, employment laws make it hard to shrink. Therefore, in the end, the least flexible, or the one with the least government money; goes out of business.

That is not an environment in which you start demanding wage rises or better “conditions” in your employment.

[Workingman]

But isn't it frustrating that it had to come to brinkmanship, where all could have been losers, rather than both sides sitting down and talking - and more importantly, listening - to each other?

It is not only the unions who have turned back to the bad old days of the 70s.

I was contracted to Royal Mail at a time when new working practices were imposed from on high, locally and nationally, and these led to strikes when the union stood up to them. It was only after negotiations to avoid the strikes that management got some of what it wanted and the workers got some of what they wanted in return. It could all have been done so differently.