Union steps up campaign of support for locked out workers

The GMB general union has begun a hardship fund with an initial donation of £100,000 to support 430 workers locked out of their construction site.

The Redhall Engineering Solutions (RES) employees lost their jobs at Saltend Chemicals near Hull in mid-March after the project to build a biofuel production plant fell behind schedule.

The GMB is calling on Vivergo Fuels, a consortium of BP, Du Pont and British Sugar which owns the site, to continue employing the workers to complete the job.

The union said the dispute arose when the project manager terminated its contract with RES and workers were not transferred as expected to a new contractor to complete the job.

As a result they have been locked out of the site and have received no wages since 14 March.

According to the GMB, talks convened by conciliation service Acas earlier last month ended when the employers walked out.

Senior organiser Les Dobbs said BP and Vivergo were trying to frustrate the workers’ TUPE rights. “Unions want guarantees that this work will be offered to the locked out workers — who have TUPE rights to this work — but we have had no such guarantees,” he said.

He added that the workers have the “full support of GMB in these protests”.