Grangemouth

[Batman]

seems could be re-opening

http://news.sky.com/story/1158973/grangemouth-union-backs-down-to-save-plant

[Batman]

huge defeat for the union here

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/25/grangemouth-closure-reverse-union-ineos

[bridge too far]

Clever, clever Ineos

 

1. Engineer a dispute

2. Threaten to take toys home if union doesn't capitulate (and remember, the union was carrying out its member's instructions)

3. Union capitulates so bring back toys

4. Secure investment including government loan guarantees and 'grants'

5. Continue to run operation with help from the taxpayer at a lower cost base thereby increasing profits and dividends

[Batman]

Clever, clever Ineos

 

1. Engineer a dispute

2. Threaten to take toys home if union doesn't capitulate (and remember, the union was carrying out its member's instructions)

3. Union capitulates so bring back toys

4. Secure investment including government loan guarantees and 'grants'

5. Continue to run operation with help from the taxpayer at a lower cost base thereby increasing profits and dividends

just reading the news. were they not being propped up from the shareholders and losing millions upon millions?

[bridge too far]

The Wiki page for Ineos is interesting. It seems to be an asset stripper in part (look at the bottom of the page).

 

Its head office is in Lyndhurst

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ineos

[egg]

just reading the news. were they not being propped up from the shareholders and losing millions upon millions?

 

That's my understanding.

 

Something had to give - you can't run a business losing £10mil a month.

 

Employees that have had it too good for a long time, both in the private or public sector, have to realise that we're now in a different world and that what happened before can't continue. Their unions need to realise that too.

 

Like Ratcliffe said, this is a victory for common sense.

[buctootim]

It seems to be an asset stripper in part (look at the bottom of the page).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ineos

 

Something had to give - you can't run a business losing £10mil a month.

 

Employees that have had it too good for a long time, both in the private or public sector, have to realise that we're now in a different world and that what happened before can't continue. Their unions need to realise that too.

 

Leading companies like BASF and BP regularly divest themselves of old technology dirty plants, products with gradually declining markets or manufacturing plants with insufficient return on capital. INEOS' whole business model is buying up cheaply the legacy assets of well known companies with brands and reputations to protect and then cutting costs.

[Wurzel]

I'm sure I remember the Ineos founder Jim Ratcliffe's name being bandied about back in takeover speculation days. Can't recall if there was anything in the rumours or if it was a clutching at straws name any local rich man type rumour.

 

Hopefully this will make a few other unions wake up, saving most jobs or taking a pay cut is better than no jobs at all. The news mentioned an average salary at the plant of £55k !

[hypochondriac]

That's my understanding.

 

Something had to give - you can't run a business losing £10mil a month.

 

Employees that have had it too good for a long time, both in the private or public sector, have to realise that we're now in a different world and that what happened before can't continue. Their unions need to realise that too.

 

Like Ratcliffe said, this is a victory for common sense.

 

Yep. Incredibly chuffed that unite had to back down. One in the eye for militant union workers.

[bridge too far]

I'm sure I remember the Ineos founder Jim Ratcliffe's name being bandied about back in takeover speculation days. Can't recall if there was anything in the rumours or if it was a clutching at straws name any local rich man type rumour.

 

Hopefully this will make a few other unions wake up, saving most jobs or taking a pay cut is better than no jobs at all. The news mentioned an average salary at the plant of £55k !

 

"As of late April 2008 INEOS was at the centre of an industrial relations dispute with Unite the Union over pension policies affecting the workforce at its Grangemouth Refinery. The company had taken the decision to close the company's final salary pension scheme to new employees due to the costs associated with its continued operation. It is also claimed by Unite that workers at Grangemouth are paid £6,000 less than workers at other similar facilities."

[hypochondriac]

"As of late April 2008 INEOS was at the centre of an industrial relations dispute with Unite the Union over pension policies affecting the workforce at its Grangemouth Refinery. The company had taken the decision to close the company's final salary pension scheme to new employees due to the costs associated with its continued operation. It is also claimed by Unite that workers at Grangemouth are paid £6,000 less than workers at other similar facilities."

 

I think the line 'claimed by unite' sorts that one out.

[egg]

It is also claimed by Unite that workers at Grangemouth are paid £6,000 less than workers at other similar facilities."

 

Whether that's true or not it's irrelevant if the wage cannot be sustained.

 

The employees had the option of still earning or not earning at all and ultmately made the only logical decision.

[Jack]

It's no surprise that plants like that lose money. I've worked in Fawley refinery and a couple of gas plants in Scotland and seen how little work actually gets done. The majority of the workers who've been in that game a long time have got so used to having it easy, the still want the world when it's not economically viable, but they'll never give that side of the argument a thought.

 

The unions have still got a lot of power, although they dispute that. They're too militant. On a job I was on in Hull we were walking out almost every couple of weeks over 15 minutes a day for the time it took to get bussed from the car park onto the site. So narrow minded, and that's from someone who's supposed to be on that side of the argument.

[trousers]

I'm sure I remember the Ineos founder Jim Ratcliffe's name being bandied about back in takeover speculation days. Can't recall if there was anything in the rumours or if it was a clutching at straws name any local rich man type rumour.

 

The latter I would venture...http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?13433-Who-is-he#.UmqAkPlwqSo

[trousers]

Clever, clever Ineos

 

1. Engineer a dispute

2. Threaten to take toys home if union doesn't capitulate (and remember, the union was carrying out its member's instructions)

3. Union capitulates so bring back toys

4. Secure investment including government loan guarantees and 'grants'

5. Continue to run operation with help from the taxpayer at a lower cost base thereby increasing profits and dividends

 

And I thought I was a predictable poster....

[bridge too far]

Interesting view on the whole sad tale

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/the-grangemouth-dispute-makes-it-clear-who-really-runs-the-country-8907430.html

[Viking Warrior]

Its a one sided view , Bridge, writen by a very bright and well spoken Owen Jones , However he has an agenda being a fourth generation socialist.

 

However what is more intersting and potentially damaging for unite and possible Labour is the matter re

Mr Deans If the Sunday times is anything to go by

This is part of the full times article.

Mr Deans sounds like an unsavourary character for a lot of reasons. signing up members when they didnt even know they were unite members. he or others were paying their first year membership fees fornew members allegedly

 

Police are reopening the files re the labour party nomonination debalcle re Kate Murphy

 

A cache of emails involving the union organiser at the centre of the Grangemouth dispute throws fresh light on one of Miliband’s biggest scandals

 

LAST Thursday morning Stevie Deans, the Unite union convenor at the giant petrochemical plant in Grangemouth, Falkirk, received an unwelcome phone call summoning him to a disciplinary meeting in the office of a senior manager.

 

In the manager’s office, Deans — a powerful union figure who is also chairman of Unite in Scotland — was confronted with the results of a three-month investigation into his conduct carried out by an outside legal firm and commissioned by Ineos’s corporate counsel.

 

Seven ring binders of paperwork, comprising about 1,000 emails and attachments sent and received by Deans between October 2012 and August 2103, were spread out on a desk in front of him.

 

A company manager explained that each of the emails was company property. Deans, it appeared, had rather unwisely used the firm’s email address for his private political correspondence.

 

The union boss was informed that in the firm’s opinion the material proved that he was guilty of “the inappropriate use of company resources and systems”. He was to be sacked. Deans, a skilled union operator, asked for five days to compile his response.

 

Len McCluskey heads Unite, the biggest union donor to LabourFor Ineos, the emails showed Deans had broken company rules but the documents have far wider ramifications, raising fresh questions about Labour’s fractious and conflicted relationship with the country’s biggest union.

 

One company insider said: “The emails show he [Deans] spent most of last summer organising his union’s infiltration of the Labour party, using our facilities. It looks like a blueprint of how a union can hijack a Labour party constituency.”

 

In a speech Miliband said the “bad practices” in Falkirk were “part of the death throes of the old politics” and “a politics that is rightly hated”.

 

On September 6 the Labour party announced Murphy and Deans had not been found guilty of any wrongdoing and their party memberships were reinstated.

 

Miliband did not apologise for his criticism of Unite’s role in Falkirk. Labour made clear in a statement that its U-turn was because “key evidence has been withdrawn”. Police said this weekend they were studying the Falkirk files, which reveal just how this was done.

[Viking Warrior]

Repeat post

[bridge too far]

Thanks for posting that VW - it's useful to hear all aspects of the issue.

[Viking Warrior]

Mr Deans has now resigned . Unite look like they have massive egg on their faces after they voted for strike action to defend him

 

 

The Unite union official at the centre of the Grangemouth industrial dispute has resigned from his job at the facility.

 

Stephen Deans had been suspended by operator Ineos over claims he used company time for union business.

 

Ineos had been expected to reveal the outcome of a disciplinary case against him on Tuesday.

 

The union previously voted for strike action over his treatment, which led to last week's shutdown of the plant.

 

 

Also Labour will be reeling from this especially Mr Connarty. From BBC SCotland

Labour MP Michael Connarty, whose Linlithgow and East Falkirk constituency includes Grangemouth, said he believed Mr Deans had been the ''subject of victimisation''.

 

Mr Connarty, who is currently at a conference in Lithuania, said he would be making no further comment until he had spoken to Mr Deans