This was not just about the 51 skilled contractors

This was not just about the 51 skilled contractors
« on: Today at 11:30:41 AM »

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This was not just about the 51 skilled contractors being laid off although this was against a previous agreement made in February, and its implication had the desired effect that Total and Jacobs wanted.

The Refinery owners Total along with Jacobs made a serious and dangerous decision to put profit before the Safety of the refinery and Local Community by awarding the contract to Italian Contractor Irem.

Due to the stringent Health and Safety controls applied to all hazardous construction in the UK, and the highly skilled certified workforce required, this has a high cost but there is no shortcuts allowed on a Union controlled site with a British trained skilled workforce.

Enter Irem with its permanent employed specialist highly skilled workforce, it is still not known if Jacobs awarded Irem the contract over the three UK companies that also tendered, or Total instructed Jacobs who to award contract to, but either way Irem was awarded the contract.

That is where the problems started we knew Irem was a non Union contractor, they also did not want Skilled British Workers working with them, we soon found out why when 60% of their welds were failed on inspection, then the accidents and total disregard and ignorance on safety issues became apparent fortunately there was a lot of damage done but no serious injuries that we know of.

This was when Jacobs had to employ Skilled British contractors to make up for the lost time on project and to make up for the skill shortage of Irem’s employees, this turned out to be worse than originally feared, most companies on these volatile contracts run with 90% Skilled to 10% Semi Skilled workforce, Irem were running 30% Skilled to 70% Semi Skilled when this became apparent Irem were asked to prove the competence of their workforce they could not, even the Skilled employees had no certification of skills or ability and could only supply CV’s which also indicated they were not a permanently employed workforce, this was to circumvent the Posted working directive.

No due diligence was done by Jacobs on Irem’s competency prior to awarding contract; they must have been blinded by the low tender and cost savings? This has left both Jacobs and Total management with a serious credibility problem and Total Incompetence which needed to be covered up, and with Irem’s work being failed on inspection as fast as it was completed it was decided that the HDS-3 project was to be mothballed and eventually restarted from practically scratch at a later date.

This is why the 51 Shaw’s workers were suddenly to be laid of Management knew what the outcome would be due to February agreement, and they played us all very well, you will note in nearly all the early media notifications Total state The HDS-3 construction project will remain closed until everyone agrees to return to work.

Why when Irem’s Specialist permanent skilled workforce who tendered and won the HDS-3 Project were not on strike?

Then on Monday they had the top Brass over from France and we can only guess that they used the protest as reason for closing the project, and blame the British Unionised workers for protesting against the use of Irem and Italian workforce, this way both Jacobs and Total could hide their Incompetent mistakes, and get rid of both Irem and British contractors.

We are assuming they have stopped using Irem if they use another foreign contractor I would not want to be living near this refinery; these problems are also being echoed across the UK where Semi Skilled Foreign contractors are being used to replace British Trained Skilled Workers.

The NAECI Agreement not only protects Workers rights it is fundamental in ensuring that a competent skilled certified workforce is employed on these highly volatile and hazardous Projects.

These paramount safety issues on these projects that protect both workers and Local communities come at a price, one that the EU multinationals appear unwilling to pay in their pursuit of profit, therefore have decided to undermine our Industry standards enforced in the NAECI Agreement.

Unless the relevant authorities get involved and do their jobs (12 Months ago) Britain will sleep walk into nightmare scenarios such as Burchfield – Buncefield - Chernobyl

Tom Herts
TBF