Wednesday 8 January 2014

Strike threat at Shetland gas plant “over room sharing”

The GMB union is threatening oil company Petrofac with strikes in a row over accommodation at the building site of a Shetland gas site.

Petrofac has been building a plant on the Shetland isles, on behalf of Total, to take gas from two offshore platforms in the North Sea since 2010.

GMB claimed an “overwhelming majority” of its members have voted to strike because they want an extra £50 per day to compensate for having to share rooms.

Harry Donaldson, Secretary, GMB Scotland said: “GMB will seek urgent talks with the main contractor to convey to them the ballot results and impress on management to need to seriously address the long running issues involved in this dispute... Petrofac have buried their heads in the sand for too long on important issues on this project.”

A spokesperson for Petrofac told ELN the dispute boils down to the fact a recent pay rise for supervisors has been spuriously linked to the room-sharing concern and suggested only a third of the workforce were polled by the union.

The 1400 workers were told three times before taking a job about the accommodation and signed a disclaimer about it.

The spokesperson said: "We’ll be looking to meet quickly with [the unions] to see how we can move forward on this issue."