newsTop stories VOWS TO FIGHT JOB CUTS – UNITE


The fears of hundreds of workers became reality on September 12, when PetroIneos confirmed that it would be closing the refinery at Grangemouth between April – June 2025, to become an import and export facility only.


Unite vowed to explore all avenues to keep high quality jobs at Grangemouth following the announcement, which places 500 directly employed workers’ jobs in jeopardy. Then of course there are thousands more indirectly affected throughout the supply chain and community.


Workers are furious at the failure of the bosses and politicians to ensure the future of the site. Unite general secretary Sharon Graham called it, “an act of industrial vandalism, pure and simple.”


But there’s no doubt among construction workers, it is they “at the front of the queue” to lose their jobs. Unite construction has vowed to keep its workplace and community on the map.


Back on August 3, Unite’s Grangemouth Fight for Jobs saw 500 workers and their supporters march from the perimeter of the industrial site to a rally demanding that the refinery’s life be extended.


The workforce, which includes hundreds of construction trades staff and contractors, learned last autumn that refinery owner PetroIneos plans to convert the site to an oil terminal. Only one hundred people would be employed at Grangemouth when the plan goes ahead.


Unite is fighting back. General secretary Sharon Graham has warned that closure puts any concept of a “just transition” in jeopardy, vowing, “We cannot allow oil and gas workers to become the coal miners of our generation.”


Unite national officer Jason Poulter said, “We’ve got some great reps up here, really proud construction workers, skilled people really proud of their jobs. With anything like [the closure announcement], one of the first things that gets affected is construction.


“When the announcement came that they were going to close the plant in 2025, our guys lost their jobs nearly overnight. Guys who were expecting to be on the site for a couple of years, having a proper family plan, just lost their jobs in the run up to Christmas. This is par for the course in construction, it’s precarious anyway but that was awful.


“Any job loss is terrible. Construction workers sometimes feel like they’re at the front of the queue when the bullets start getting fired, and we’ve got


10 unite buildingWORKER Autumn 2024


hundreds of construction workers on Grangemouth who’ve worked there for years and years and years, they’ve kept it running, they’ve provided critical maintenance, all the shutdowns, everything like that, they’ve kept this place going.”


Unite reps have highlighted that a viable future will require not only keeping the refinery open, but significant investment too.


Electrical shop steward Alex McCabe told buildingWORKER that the initial announcement was greeted with “disbelief” by the workforce. “The refinery itself, it’s making, when it does work, £1.5m a day, and if it was a newer cracker plant, because the cracker plant’s on its knees, if that was fixed and up and running, and it was new, it could possibly make £2.5m a day, so £600m-odd a year profit.”


At Zetland Park in Grangemouth, the rally on August 3 was addressed by politicians Brian Leishman and Kenny MacAskill, Friends of the Earth Scotland just transition campaigner Rosie Hampton and local businessman Amrit Dhillon.


Chris Hamilton, Unite’s convener at Grangemouth, asked, “If a just transition can’t be delivered here, will it be delivered anywhere?”


Research shows that 70 per cent of the Grangemouth workforce live in the town and its immediate surrounding areas. “The one thing that runs common throughout this workforce, however they’ve come to work at the site, is their locality and connection to this area,” Hamilton added.


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