The Grangemouth oil refinery and petrochemical plant in Scotland remains on shutdown despite Unite calling off a 48-hour strike that had been due to begin on Sunday.
Members of the Unite union had planned a downing of tools on 20th October in a bitter row over the treatment of union convener, Stephen Deans.
Unite’s Scottish secretary, Pat Rafferty, claimed the union had decided to call off the strike after the site’s operator, Ineos, “walked away” during through the night talks on Tuesday.
Mr Rafferty said: “The plant should now start the return to full production and there is no excuse for this not to happen.”
Two days after Mr Rafferty’s comments and the facility remains on shutdown.
Three times the size of the City of London
In comments reported by the BBC, a spokesman for Ineos said: “The Grangemouth site is three times the size of the City of London and it is an incredibly complex system of manufacturing plants all connected by miles of pipes carrying highly flammable materials.
“Shutting down the site and restarting again is not like switching the lights off and on. It takes days to shut down properly and it takes weeks to bring it back up again.
“When Unite forced us to shut down in 2008 we had two major incidents and it took eight weeks to get back to normal. In the first incident, we had a large fire on a compressor. If our employees had been close to the area then there would have been serious injuries or even fatalities.”
Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, is set to hold talks with both parties in a bid to end the dispute.
