Immingham, England - Wildcat strikes against foreign workers spread to oil refineries and other energy facilities across Britain on Friday, fuelled by fears of mounting job cuts due to the global slowdown.
The protest started at Britain's third-largest oil refinery, Lindsey in Lincolnshire, eastern England, where workers first walked out Wednesday over the use of Italian and Portuguese contractors on a £200m building project.
But it crossed quickly Friday to several other refineries and a power plant across Britain, where unemployment is currently at its highest rate for 10 years as the credit crunch hits hard.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has in the past made a point of pledging "British jobs for British workers," while more recently warning against trade protectionism as a response to the worldwide downturn.
Local lawmaker Shona McIsaac, of Brown's ruling Labour Party, said the decision to hire foreign contractors was "like a red rag to a bull for people in our community who are out of work".
The BBC reported that 1 000 workers at the Milford Haven gas terminal in west Wales had gone on strike in sympathy Friday.
Some 700 workers for oil giant BP and chemicals firm INEOS at Grangemouth, Scotland's only oil refinery, also stopped work.
Around 400 people took action at a refinery in Wilton, northeast England, 100 were reportedly striking at a gas terminal near Peterhead, northeast Scotland and 50 protested at Aberthaw power station in south Wales.
Up to 1 000 workers protested peacefully for several hours at Lindsey, run by French oil company Total, holding up placards saying "Right To Work UK Workers" amid a heavy presence of police with dogs and on horses.
Bernard McAuley of the Unite trade union told protestors from a flatbed truck: "There is sufficient unemployed skilled labour wanting the right to work on that site and they are demanding the right to work on that site.
Back on Monday
"We want fairness. We want the rights of our members to have the opportunity to be employed, not just on this job but on all jobs around the United Kingdom."
That protest has now ended but those involved vowed they would be back on Monday.
The dispute stems from Total's award of the contract to build a new desulphurisation unit at the Lindsey site to Italian company IREM.
Around 100 Italian and Portuguese workers, who live on barges in a nearby docks, work there currently and are set to be joined by 300 more next month.
Brown's official spokesperson said the contract at Lindsey had been agreed some time ago when there was a shortage of skilled construction labour in Britain.
"That obviously is not now the case and we will be speaking to the industry in the next few days to ensure that they are doing all they can to support the UK economy," he added.
The British government has tried to limit the number of migrant workers coming here in recent years.
In 2007, Brown pledged to find "British jobs for every British worker" as the government announced a toughening of the points system which allows skilled wokers to come to Britain from outside the European Union (EU).
But EU law enshrines the right to the freedom of movement for workers between member countries.
Unemployment in Britain has risen sharply in recent months, with thousands of job cuts at firms like steelmaker Corus in the last few weeks. Two million people are without a job and the unemployment rate is 6.1%.
Total said there would be "no direct redundancies" at the Lindsey refinery as a result of the contract being awarded to IREM and stressed the action had not affected operations there.
- AFP