Wildcat walkout action continues

The walkouts were sparked after bosses at Lindsey oil refinery brought in foreign labour

Scottish energy workers are continuing with wildcat strike action over the use of foreign labour despite calls from the UK Government for it to stop.

Contractors are taking part in fresh walkouts at plants in Grangemouth, Longnannet and Mossmorran in Fife.

The action is in support of staff at the Lindsay oil plant in Lincolnshire who walked out over moves to hire foreign workers on a new £200m plant.

It follows mass meetings by unions across the country on Monday.

More than 1,500 Scottish workers staged unofficial walkouts on Friday over the issue.

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson maintained that UK firms and workers were not being discriminated against and called for the unofficial strikes to stop.

Despite his calls, about 500 contractors at the Grangemouth oil refinery, near Falkirk, who took unofficial action on Friday, walked out again on Monday following a mass meeting, unions said.

'Staying out'

However, they also decided they would return to work on Tuesday.

About 400 workers at Longannet, in Fife, have voted to stay out on strike for 24 hours and return to hold another mass meeting at 0730 GMT on Tuesday.

Hugh McGarvey, a shop steward at Longannet, said the vote there reflected solidarity with workers elsewhere.

He told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland programme: "I think the government are planning certain things, although I haven't heard anything definite, I'm sure a lot of guys, like today, wanted to stay out until they get the recommendations that they've asked for."

About 130 at Scottish Power's Cockenzie Power Station are also taking part in the action, along with 80 contractors at ExxonMobil's petrochemicals plant in Mossmorran and 150 workers at the Shell plant.

Bobby Buirds, a regional officer for Unite in Scotland, warned there could be more walkouts across the country.

He said: "The mood is hardening and is full of resolve.

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"The workers want to send a message to these foreign companies who are refusing to recruit locally to have a change of heart and recruit locally. "There are sympathy stoppages all over the place."

Workers at the various sites will hold meetings again on Tuesday to decide whether to continue the action.

Scottish Power said none of its workers were involved and the walkout by contract staff was not affecting power generation.

Shell said that the staff taking part in the action were non-operational, and that its plant was functioning as normal.

A spokesman said it understood workers at Shell's St Fergus plant in Aberdeenshire, who walked out on Friday, had gone back to work on Monday.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said the wildcat strikes were "not defensible" and Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy called on unions not to "escalate" the dispute.

The government has said it might challenge EU law to stop cheap foreign labour "undercutting" British workers.

This would need the agreement of other member states and could take years to get through and the Liberal Democrats warned challenging EU labour laws would be a "huge, self-defeating step too far".

The walkouts were sparked after bosses at the Lindsey oil refinery brought in Italian and Portuguese contractors.

Unions said the jobs should have gone to British workers.

The dispute quickly spread to sites across the country, with about 1,400 workers staging action in Scotland on Friday.