Socialist Appeal
interviewed Antonio Recano, an engineering shop steward,
who worksin the construction and maintenance of
industrial plants, and works for one of the companies operating within the
Syracuse oil refinery. He is a member of the FIOM-CGIL (metalworkers' union),
on its Syracuse provincial committee and also the Central Committee (national
committee) of the FIOM-CGIL.
The protest at Lindsey was a victory for the workers involved. It sends out a clear message to the rest of the workers in Britain: militant action pays and shows what can be achieved in the face of attack. The background to this dispute was a deliberate employers’ offensive to undermine the National Agreement for the Engineering Construction Industry (NAECI) and had nothing whatosever to do with racism or xenophobic tendencies. It was the bourgeois media that consciously tried to portary it as such in order to hide the real content.
Last week industrial action began at the Lindsey refinery in Lincolnshire. Swiftly the strikes spread to Grangemouth in Scotland, Wilton in Cleveland and all over the country. By Friday 3,000 skilled workers were out from 11 plants. On Monday thousands more joined the action. As a news item, the dispute has been highlighted by pictures of workers carrying placards with the slogan, ‘British jobs for British workers.’ However, most of the workers on strike are aware that their enemy is the employer. That, after all, is who they are striking against.