Charles on… anything that comes along

So the Grangemouth strikers have realised that the fact that they’re essential to the running of a plant which refines huge amounts of oil and which in turn powers other oil-refinining plants gives them enormous leverage.

Yet the thing about this strike is that it’s not about pay. Not per se - it’s about pensions. The Grangemouth strikers have the plumpest pensions:

(Presently the top result on a “Grangemouth strikers” search is “why not sack the lot of them?” Obvious answer being “because it’s not an easy job”.)

The workers there don’t pay into a pension scheme; yet even so they get a final salary scheme. This has of course nettled Ineos, which is a bit of a Mr Burns, at least according to what I’ve read. (The Guardian seems to have the only sensible coverage on this.)

So the strike’s about the pension scheme. Ineos wants to close it to new employees and get the existing ones paying in to it. Even so it says

Ineos says it will keep a final salary scheme for all existing workers, paying one sixtieth salary for every year worked, and is proposing that employees contribute 6% over the next six years.

Anyhow, what this strike has shown the Grangemouth workers is that if you’re in the right industry, in the right place, in a key loction, you have to be listened to.

Who’s next? Water workers? Electricity? Gas? Docks? We get the underground strikes from time to time, but the Grangemouth case shows that some workers will realise that they can - at least - get their pensions improved, at the very least.

I’m sure the government’s COBRA group will already know which are the key parts of our infrastructure that need to be kept running. I wonder how easily that would leak to the staff involved there?

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