Knowledge is Power

Here's a blog site post from the other day which highlights the very different way that Unite has behaved in response to a 'cuts' agenda from two big employers - Ineos in Grangemouth and South Lanarkshire Council just a few miles along the M8 motorway.

  

Knowledge is Power

A number of readers have been in touch to ask if I have an email address for the leader of Unite - Len McCluskey.

Well I don't, but I made a quick visit the the Unite web site and as far as I can see Len's email address is:

len.mccluskey@unitetheunion.org

Now assuming that the email formula is the same, the email address of the union's Scottish regional - Pat Rafferty - would be:

pat.rafferty@unitetheunion.org

So, if anyone does decide to write to the union's general secretary or regional secretary in Scotland - keep me posted, as I would be happy to report the details on the blog site.  

United We Stand (23 October 2013)

I just heard from a reader in South Lanarkshire - a Unite member - who says that he's sent an email to Pat Rafferty, Unite's regional secretary in Scotland, to ask why union members in South Lanarkshire Council are not getting the same support and service as the workforce at the Ineos plant in Grangemouth.

A very good question, if you ask me - because the two situations are very similar as I explained in a previous post dated 21 October 2013 "Spot the Difference'.

Here's what Pat Rafferty has been saying about the Grangemouth dispute:

“This resounding rejection of the company’s cynical blackmail sends a clear message to the company.

“The people who have so far rejected Ineos’s ultimatum are the backbone of the plant, the people who keep the site running and the oil flowing. The people of Grangemouth and Scotland will be expecting Jim Ratcliffe and the Ineos shareholders to now take heed. Do the right thing, drop the threats to the workforce, fire up the plant and get around the table at Acas.

“This is an overwhelming rejection of the company’s blackmail and threats. This workforce has said that they want to secure a future for Grangemouth, free from fear, based on negotiation not confrontation.”
Yet Unite members in Labour-run South Lanarkshire Council say that the same thing has happened to them - accept big cuts in their pay and conditions or face the sack - but strangely Unite has failed to put up any kind of fight.

Unlike the situation in Grangemouth where members have been urged to stand firm and reject the employer's - the unions in South Lanarkshire have simply rolled over and left their members high and dry.

Spot the Difference (21 October 2013)

If I were a member of Unite, the union, I would want to ask why my union is running a big, high profile campaign against Ineos - owners of the Grangemouth oil refinery and petrochemical plant - while the union turns a blind eye to similar behaviour just a few miles down the road in South Lanarkshire.

Now I don't know the details of the cuts that Ineos is proposing to the pay and conditions of its 1300 workers, but I would be surprised if their size and scale is any worse than what has been going on in South Lanarkshire recently - where a similar number of male council workers have seen the equivalent of double digit reduction in their pay - up to 12% in some cases.

In Grangemouth, the employer says that change is necessary to secure the long term future of the plant - and I heard a news report claim that Ineos is prepared to offer a lump sum of £15,000 to 'buy out' the existing terms and conditions of its employees.

Whereas in South Lanarkshire the Council simply gave hundreds of workers (in traditional male jobs- refuse workers, gardeners, janitors and such like) an ultimatum - sing up to the new terms or face the sack by having your existing contract terminated and offered a new one on inferior terms.

So the big question is - 'Why is Unite up in arms in one part of Scotland, but not in another?'

I've read comment pieces in newspapers about the terrible situation facing workers in Grangemouth - but the same commentators have nothing to say about the goings on in South Lanarkshire - where thousands of women council employees have been fighting for equal pay for years.

And now the Council - a Labour-run Council - is trying to make hundreds of hard working male workers pay the price for the mess that senior figures have made of implementing the 1999 Single Status (Equal Pay) Agreement.

As I've said before on the blog site, Equal Pay was never about male council workers being paid too much - but about so many women's jobs being paid too little.

And what puzzles me is how trade union leaders like Unite's Len McCluskey come up to Scotland and talk tough about their 'leftwing' political credentials while behaving one way in Grangemouth - but in a completely different way just a few miles away in Hamilton, East Kilbride and Rutherglen.