Kilroot workers take wildcat action

antrim | worker & community struggles and protests | news report

Tuesday July 15, 2008 18:52

by Sean Matthews

A week on discontent in the North......

The image say's it all........

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom and yet deprecate agitation are people who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. That struggle might be a moral one; it might be a physical one; it might be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and never will. People might not get all that they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get.” Frederick Douglass

As the cost of living and rate of inflation has hit a 10 year high, over 200 construction workers at Kilroot power station in Northern Ireland decided to take matters into their own hands without intermediaries in solidarity with a victimised worker who was ‘asked’ to leave the site after raising health and safety concerns. The workers who proud tradition of taking industrial action including the lighting wildcat strike last year, are employed by subcontractor Amec are installing pollution-curbing Flue Gas Desulphurisation(FGD) equipment at the coal-fired plant. Kilroot’s American owners AES were granted permission to install FGD in 2005 by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment despite firm opposition from the Department of the Environment. As usual NIE customers will be expected to pick the cost which could rise to £55 million.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday and Thursday of this week thousands of council workers in Northern Ireland are expected to strike with their fellow workers across Britain in a long-running dispute over pay including the closing down of Derry city airport during the strike’s duration.

Across the globe, class war appears to cutting through South-East Asia like wildfire. Over 40,000 workers in the ‘luxurious’ diamond factories in Gujarat home to many diamond factories in India attacked small factories and homes of the owners of the factories demanding better wages. According to libcom, “The agitation by the diamond cutting workers have spread to Rajkot, Junagadh, Palanpur and other areas in the State. In a bid to break the impasse, the Surat Diamond Industries Association announced its decision to implement a 20 per cent hike(which the strikers demanded) in the wages with immediate effect “

With the economy slowing down, now is no better time to organise with a summer of discontent on the way.....