Ineos anger over pickets as refinery row heats up

TRaDE unions locked in a furious row with chemicals giant Ineos have been branded ‘turkeys voting for Christmas’ after they picketed supermarkets that buy fuel from its Grangemouth refinery.

Grangemouth staff began industrial action this week in protest at Ineos’s investigation into whether union shop steward Stephen Deans misused company facilities.

The bitter battle has delayed separate talks over cost cuts Ineos claims are vital to save Grangemouth Petrochemicals from closing by 2017, after losing £576m in four years.

I neos accused unite of putting Grangemouth’s future at even greater risk, after members were seen protesting outside the uK headquarters of fuel customers Morrisons and asda.

Grangemouth Petrochemicals chairman Calum Maclean said: ‘unite seems hell-bent on trying to close this site. We are losing £10m a month and trying to stem these losses.

‘To go to our customers’ offices and try to get them to stop trading with us is like turkeys voting for Christmas. If this plant shuts, all the blame will be with unite.’

Sources familiar with talks between unite and Ineos said meetings aimed at resolving the crisis have descended into acrimony.

The dispute has escalated rapidly, after Ineos refused to end i ts i nvestigation i nto Deans and submit the case to conciliation service acas.

union pamphlets handed out during yesterday’s picket accused the company of ‘victimising’ Deans, a 46-year-old father of two who has worked at Grangemouth for 24 years. Ineos called the leaflet ‘abusive, untrue and defamatory’.

Deans was investigated by the labour Party and police over allegations union members were signed up to the party without their knowledge in the Falkirk parliamentary constituency.

He was cleared by both the party and police, but remains the subject of an Ineos probe.

Ineos wants to implement a cost-saving plan which would involve scrapping the final salary pension scheme and transfering staff into what the company says is a ‘generous’ stock market- l i nked money purchase scheme

Ineos says this would allow it to invest £300m in a terminal at the site to import shale gas from the uS.

This would replace dwindling North Sea gas stocks, which have left the petrochemicals facility running at just 50pc capacity.