National Bargaining - Threat to agreement
WORKERS, SEPT 2006 ISSUE
Gordon Brown's speech at the Mansion House in July called for an end to national bargaining. Now Ineos, Britain's largest privately owned company and the third largest chemical company in the world, has given notice that either the National Agreement for the Engineering and Construction Industries (NAECI) changes or they withdraw.
The threat is naked: if it remains Ineos will not invest in UK projects, or if it has to then it will "employ workers from other countries". It will ship cheap labour to the UK to undermine established wage rates, skills, terms and conditions, and so on.
The NAECI covers 52,000 workers and was drawn up in 1981. It and the Joint Industry Board for the electrical contracting industry remain the last two key national agreements in manufacturing and construction.