British jobs for British workers: is ‘protectionism’ valid?
February 5, 2009
You’d have to have been living in a cave somewhere in the middle of nowhere to have not heard this week’s big news story. This is about the widespread industrial action that has taken place in a row over Italian workers being imported to work on a contracted job at a Total oil refinery in Lincolnshire.
The dispute occurred because a contract at the Lindsey Oil Refinery was awarded to IREM; an Italian Company, who gained an agreement that they could bring in their own workers from Italy and Portugal to carry out the work. British workers and their unions were dissatisfied with this because they feel that British workers are being denied work; as many jobs like this are being given to foreign workers instead. Of course, the recession has exacerbated this debate because so many jobs are being lost or are at risk, so it is angering some people even more to see foreign workers taking jobs that could potentially be carried out by British workers. Once workers had staged a protest at Lindsey, thousands of workers at other sites across the country carried out their own unofficial industrial action in sympathy.
The dispute has been settled to an extent, with strikers having voted today to return to work on Monday after a deal was struck in which an additional 102 jobs will be created for British workers on the contract, without sacrificing any of the jobs that will be given to the Italian and Portuguese workers. However it is likely that the general dispute about these sorts of actions will continue for a long time, especially as job security and financial stability continue to cause concerns for UK workers during the recession. Even union officials have been saying “the fight does not stop here” and there is now more strike action taking place at Staythorpe power station in Nottinghamshire over lack of work.
This is a very strange and interesting debate. On the one hand it is easy to see why people in one country who are worried about their jobs would feel aggrieved to see people from another country effectively ‘stealing’ their opportunity to work; and therefore ‘protectionism’ appears to be a legitimate course of action. On the other hand, we are part of the European Union, and this means that anyone from the EU has a right to work anywhere within it. The unions are trying to argue that giving British companies the opportunity to make agreements with contractors in which they can bring in their own employees is direct discrimination against British workers. If this argument succeeds, then could we see new legislation dictating the way contracts are agreed with foreign contractors in future?
This sounds like an argument that could stretch into other realms of ‘who should be allowed to work (stroke, be) where?’ and it’s a little unsettling for me. What happens when ‘British jobs’ are kept for ‘British people’ and then it turns out that the people that get them are immigrant workers from foreign countries? Will the workers and unions feel that the right person has got the job in the end? John Philpott, Chief Economist for the CIPD, describes:
‘the worrying undercurrent of xenophobia evident in the current rash of unofficial strikes’
and this effectively describes the way that I feel about this situation. What is your opinion on the events that have taken place and the implications for the future of foreign contracts?
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