A single offshore union? Background to the debate

Submitted by Janine on 7 March, 1991 - 1:25 Author: Tom Rigby

A major debate on strategy is opening up among activists in the offshore oil and gas industry.

Up for consideration is the idea of organising a new union for offshore workers.

After a magnificent campaign of unofficial strike action in the summer of 1989 and '90, union recognition and decent health and safety provision has not yet been won.

Last autumn, national union leaders offered official support for a recognition ballot on the apparent condition that the rank-and-file based Offshore Industry Liaison Committee call off its unofficial strike action.

The unofficial action stopped, but the ballot never materialised. OILC activists found themselves hemmed in by the anti-union laws Kinnock wants to keep. The best union activists were ruled out of any ballot.

As Ronnie MacDonald, chair of the OILC, explained at the time: "It's a simple fact that the officials of the unions are not balloting those workers who have been sacked. It's the law. It's not the union's position. You can't get round it. Once people have been sacked they no longer have an employer, and therefore cannot declare a trade dispute.

The sacked workers and those out on the platforms are very, very angry about this.

It's so easy to get ballots invalidated. All the employers have to do is take on, say, six extra workers on the eve of a strike, and they can claim that circumstances have changed. The courts will then declare the ballot null and void. The oil contractors are also using other methods to frustrate the ballot.

They are refusing to give us accurate lists of their employees. They can then have the ballot declared invalid as some people are likely not to have been balloted."

The start of the Gulf War encouraged many national trade union officials to postpone the North Sea recognition fight. They were frightened of appearing unpatriotic. The TGWU, for instance, has just sat on a massive ballot vote for strike action over pay.

These problems have been compounded by divisions among national union officials and rumours of single-union and no-strike deals being cooked up. As Blow Out, the offshore workers' rank-and-file paper put it:

"The unions' 'one table approach' has been junked in favour of 'every man for himself'. The RMT/TGWU and the EETPU are already going for the old sectional agreements, the same agreements we've worked under and died under all these years.

And where does the offshore worker stand in all this? He's the only person who can claim safety as his first priority, because he alone stands to lose his life when it fails. Our rule in the new regime is to be what it always was: stay silent if you want to keep your job.

Well, the offshore workforce has come too far to accept that. If the 'single table' approach has failed, then a 'single union' approach must surely be up for discussion. If the national leaders of our unions cna offer us no perspective for the future, then we will surely be forced to investigate all alternative possibilities."

Dissatisfaction with the officials, according to many OILC activists, must not lead to an attempt to cut off all links with the official movement. As Ronnie MacDonald puts it, "any solution must be within the mainstream of the labour movement".

The dilemma is that no matter how conciliatory the OILC may be towards the national unions currently organising offshore, the officials of the AEU, the GMB, the EETPU, MSF, RMT, and TGWU are unlikely to be willing to surrender members and dues income to a rank-and-file-controlled union.

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