Lord Mandelson announces wildcat strike review
By politics.co.uk staff
Business secretary Lord Mandelson has announced a review into the skills and productivity of British workers to ensure they can compete with foreign companies for construction contracts.
Following from a series of wildcat strikes against the use of foreign workers, the review, announced in conjunction with the skills secretary John Denham, will focus on the British engineering construction industry.
An independent inquiry into the strikes by arbitration firm Acas will be published today. It is expected to conclude the use of Italian workers at the Lindsey oil refinery did not break employment law or undercut the pay of British workers.
This will come as a blow to union leaders who believed the owner of the refinery, French company Total, was bringing in foreign labour to work more hours for less pay than their British counterparts.
Major unions, such as Unite and GMB, have claimed the EU directive on the posting of foreign workers allows foreign companies to pay foreign workers less, as the law only requires they EU-wide minimum standards, rather than those of the country in which they are working.
The Acas report may lead to employers highlighting the lack of productivity of British workers in comparison to their foreign counterparts as the reason construction contracts are going abroad.
The government hopes the review, led by Mark Gibson, director general of business support in the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, will lead to increased productivity of British workers – allowing them to better compete for engineering construction contracts.
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