The Refinery Strike

I've heard so many ill-informed comments about the workers at Grangemouth refinery going on strike I thought I'd put the record straight.

BP owned the whole site for 75 years, last year they sold it to the company that owns it now.
There has never been a strike in the sites history but because of this new companies policy of not continuing the workers pension benefits the workers feel they have no choice but to take industrial action.

When BP owned the site the pension scheme was non-contributory, they paid nothing for their pensions, when the workers had done their 25 years service they retired with two thirds their final salary, so if your salary was £300 per week at retiral age you got £200 per week as a pension.
The new company wishes to end this benefit and this is why the workers are taking strike action.

I heard their spokesman on TV last night trying to put the blame on the unions for the deadlock during meetings they've had.
BP operated the site and made profits from it since the site was built but decided to sell it and concentrate on exploration globally to discover new oil fields.

The refinery has a large power station which supplies electricity and high pressure steam which all the processes need to produce our oil and gas, this is the structure you've seen on TV with the large chimneys.
About a mile down the road from the power station is Kinneil gas terminal which is supplied with power and steam from the refinery.
When the lads close it down on Sunday the gas terminal will have to shut down too, this will mean a loss in gas supplies as the North sea oil field pipeline will be shut down, it means shutting down over 70 oil platforms in the north sea.
This will result in a loss of revenue of £50,000,000 per day with the knock-on effect of loss of revenue to the government in taxes of £1,000,000 every hour of every day, the pipeline supplies one third of the UK's oil and gas.

All this could be avoided if the new company continued to leave the pension scheme as it used to be, if BP made profits operating the refinery why can't this new company do the same ?

Yesterday at a filling station I heard comments from customers saying the workers at Grangemouth were a disgrace, this is just not true, it's the new companies directors who are disgraceful, they want to make the maximum profit for their investors at the expense of the workers at the plant IMO.

Fuel rationing has already started at some filling stations, I saw a sign today saying a £20 limit on all sales of petrol and diesel, this is because motorists are topping up their tanks, can you blame them ?

The next time you're sitting in a queue waiting to get fuel please don't blame the refinery workers, blame the fat cats running the company that owns it.

Sorry for the rant but there's a huge smoke screen being put down over this dispute by the new company, IMO it's all PR on their part, commonly known as passing the buck.

Interesting..

I have sent this link to a couple of friends who are employed by Ineos

My hubby drives tankers for BP and he agrees with the strike

I've just heard the spokesman for the union give his point of view, he said that the plant makes between £1,000,000 and £3,000,000 profit per DAY, this statement backs up my original post.

They're trying to cut the cost of running the plant as much as they can to meet the repayments to the banks.

I think the new company borrowed billions to buy the plant and because of the recent credit squeeze by the banks they're having financial difficulties paying back the loan, this happened to the Spanish company that bought British Airports.

Hi Louise, can I ask how long they've worked there and how they feel about the situation, I've spoken to two friends who are still there and they're really tee'd off by this new company regarding the pension situation.

Not sure but her words to your post was Congratulations LOL..

They have worked there since before it was taken over as far as I know though..

I think she is rather hacked off with it too..She never said if she was for or against but apparently there are rumours going around that their will be black marks against the people who do strike

..... and I heard that the Company are losing £1,000,000 per HOUR by them not working!!! Doesn't make sense for them not to pay out does it really???

Couldn't agree more.

Been out to a friends tonight, and passed a couple of Petrol stations. All looking fine...then pass the one near to home (Tesco), people are queuing, and there were riot police watching people fill up!!!

thank you, now i understand no wonder they want to strike