Unlawful action, Stanlow, Monday 22 June 2009

Off at ten past five with Amy and Dave, it's an hour to the vast Stanlow Oil Refinery, maybe the single largest industrial plant in Britain. Six square miles or more of giant containers and cracking towers, everything grey under a grey sky. With lots of different gates round the site, looking for the construction workers isn't straight forward. First we drive anti clockwise round the site eventually hitting a dead end with security staff wanting to know what we are doing. Then back round clockwise only to be directed back again by security and told to find gate 4.

We park up in an almost empty car park and tell the security at the turnstile into the site we want to meet the union reps. After a bit they tell us to leave. We politely ignore this and carry on talking to the workers parking up. It's just before seven and there's a steady trickle arriving. A mass meeting is planned with the officials at eight. Everyone is friendly, most take the Socialist Worker leaflets and Dave is successful selling a number of papers. The work they are doing I understand is preparing for a huge maintenance shut down at the end of the year. There are a number of different firms involved. Not every firm here has a union rep. Mucker, we're told, is the senior steward. There is little reference to foreign workers and no talk of 'British jobs for British workers'. One worker talks at length how bad it was that the BNP could try to get a hearing during the first Lindsey strike. A young worker talks of how tough the trade is. Jobs often don't last long and he was unemployed for three months before he got this job. Another, John, who it turns out is coming to Marxism, tells of when he was a steward organising on the GMEX site in Manchester.

They all voted to walk out on Friday. Today they will decide what next. Not everyone thinks they will vote to stay out. The meeting starts with at least two hundred present, probably more. All men, though there was one woman working on the site recently. Dave, the GMB official, wearing a suit, explains clearly the importance of the dispute and the threat to the national agreement covering construction workers on big industrial sites. He talks of the prospect of an official strike in six months time over pay and in defence of the national agreement and the need for solidarity now. The UNITE official concurs. They both say that the anti union laws mean that as officials they have to tell them to go back to work - the technical term is repudiate the action - but they are now going to walk across the car park and leave the workforce to decide themselves what to do.

Mucker, Tony Fields, the shop steward for the scaffolders, takes over and asks for a proposal. Someone shouts 'We stay out till we can all go back together'. A young worker asks how long it would take to organise a legal ballot and there are a few shouts of 'weeks' and similar. The chair proposes a vote and asks all in favour of staying out to show. A sea of hands goes up. Votes against are asked for and no one raises their hand. No cheers but no murmurs of discontent. Quite relaxed, chatting in groups, people slowly move off to their cars. I talk with Tony Fields. He is active in UNITE Left and remembers Ian Allinson getting expelled from the Gazette. He's collecting name and address forms off people to get the details needed for the ballot later in the year which is likely to be challenged in the courts by the employers arguing that the ballot lists are inaccurate. There are some reports of votes for solidarity walkouts elsewhere and a mass burning of sacking notices at Lindsey. Tony and I swap phone numbers. By now the car park is almost empty. It's the first time I've ever been present at a vote for unlawful strike action and it feels good.