The Two Faces of Grangemouth
You have probably never heard of Grangemouth. Even its mother would be hard pressed to call it a pretty town, festooned as it is with tall steel chimneys belching fire into the night sky on the Firth of Forth about 15 miles west of Edinburgh on Scotland’s east coast. It is home to an oil refinery that accounts for about 10% of Scotland’s GDP and it is owned by a company called Ineos. You have probably never heard of it either, though it is Britain’s largest private company.
Nor will you have heard of Stephen Deans, convener of the Unite union and an employee of the plant at Grangemouth these past 24 years. Regular readers of the blog will remember the story of the Unite union and its alleged (and unproven) attempts to infiltrate the Falkirk labor party, supposedly to ensure that its favoured candidate was elected in the upcoming 2015 election. Well, Stephen Deans, and here the plot thickens, is the leader of the Falkirk Labor party, the very man behind the signing of dozens of new Labor members in Falkirk. It was alleged that Unite would pay their membership fees – on the understanding that they would back the union’s choice of candidate. According to an article by James Cook, the BBC’s Scotland correspondent, “crucially it was alleged that some of the members were signed up in the refinery, i.e. on the property of INEOS, Mr Deans’ employer”. This offends against Ineos policy, so Mr Deans was suspended.
Ineos management has been carrying out its own enquiry and results were due to be announced on 18th October. The union has been pressing for Mr Deans immediate reinstatement and when the company failed to cooperate, it threatened a strike by the workforce.
Talks took place at ACAS but to no avail. Despite this, the union called off the strike. Management claim that the plant was already in the process of