Red Len plots petrol strike by militant fuel tanker drivers to cripple UK
Walkouts by 3,000 drivers, which union bosses are due to confirm this week, will bring fresh misery to Britain’s 36 million motorists, already hit by VAT and fuel tax hikes.
But the domino effect of the dispute – led by union firebrand ‘Red’ Len McCluskey – also threatens fuel supplies to industry, hospitals, schools and the homes of old and vulnerable people who use oil central heating.
The strike action planned by Mr McCluskey’s union Unite, Britain’s biggest, is confirmed in internal documents seen by The Mail on Sunday.
The dispute risks endangering the economic recovery amid fears that fuel shortages could lead to profiteering by garages, where motorists face long queues at the pumps.
It could also spill over into manufacturing industry and threaten shops and supermarkets with food shortages as haulage firms run out of fuel. Few companies carry large stocks of fuel because of the huge expense and the volatile nature of oil prices.
The dispute, which could begin next month, centres on demands by Mr McCluskey and his union for Seventies-style national collective bargaining with oil firms, distributors and contractors, who currently negotiate individually and do not pay drivers – who earn up to £40,000 – an agreed national rate.
Employers fear that if they agree to a national negotiating forum, it will give Mr McCluskey – who is understood to enjoy a pay and perks package of more than £100,000 a year – the power to call nationwide walkouts more easily.
Unions are desperate to reintroduce the type of collective bargaining used in former nationalised industries such as coal and steel. It gave unions the power to order their members out on strike, bringing entire industrial sectors to a standstill.
A senior fuel supply industry source said the last thing employers wanted was to agree to outdated collective bargaining arrangements.
Picket line: Striking tanker drivers at the stanlow oil refinery near Ellesmere Port in Cheshire in 2008
The source said this was because most fuel supplies were distributed by haulage contractors which not only tendered for the work, but also negotiated separate wage and conditions deals with their drivers.
The tanker dispute will throw the spotlight on to Mr McCluskey, 60, who masterminded the British Airways cabin crew walkouts last year, and has made it clear he will support mass strike action to oppose the Government’s spending plans.
FROM DOCK HAND TO UNION BOSS
Firebrand ‘Red’ Len McCluskey was weaned on union politics in his native Liverpool where he started work as a docker in the late 1960s.
The young McCluskey was elected a shop steward of the Transport & General Workers’ Union at just 19. He became a full-time T&GWU official in 1979 – the year Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister.
During the 1980s, he supported the Trotskyite Militant Tendency, although he never became a member and has been a member of the Labour Party for 40 years.
He moved to London in 1990 to become national secretary for the T&GWU’s General Workers’ Group and became national organiser for service industries in 2004.
The 60-year-old married father-of-three became known as ‘Red’ Len when, as assistant general secretary of Unite – formed from the merger of the T&G and other unions – he took charge of the British Airways cabin crew dispute last year, which cost the airline an estimated £100 million in lost revenue.
Last November, McCluskey swept to victory in a secret ballot to become Unite general secretary.
Mr McCluskey, who likes quoting Communist guerilla leader Che Guevara, called out ‘rubbish’ when new Labour leader Ed Miliband condemned irresponsible industrial action in his speech to the party’s conference last autumn.
Soon after, Britain’s most powerful union baron declared: ‘There is no such thing as an irresponsible strike. Workers take strike action because they genuinely feel there is nothing else they can do.’
Unite has given Labour more than £3 million in the past year, making the union the party’s largest donor. It also ploughed £10,000 into Ed Miliband’s leadership campaign.
If the strikes go ahead, pickets are likely to target key refineries and fuel distribution centres, including Grangemouth in Scotland, Stanlow near Ellesmere Port, Cheshire, and Shell’s Coryton refinery in Essex, which was at the centre of a strike by tanker drivers two years ago.
Internal documents show Unite will tread carefully before calling out its drivers by ensuring it stages a legally safe secret ballot. It does not want to be taken to the High Court, as it was in the BA dispute for allegedly not providing the correct addresses for each of those voting.
A ballot will take up to a month to conduct. The union must give seven days’ notice of action. Unite’s National Oil Trades Conference sub-group, which meets on Tuesday, is expected to agree to ballot for a strike. The union’s larger National Oil Trades Conference is expected to rubber stamp the decision the next day.
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