YOUR report today, New deal for oil firms and trade unions, of a new rapprochement between the UK offshore oil operators and seven TUC-affiliated trade unions bears closer scrutiny. Observers of the fraught history of the failed attempts to establish trade unionism in the offshore oil industry will need more persuasion that this latest of several recent ''breakthrough deals'', ''new understandings'', and ''partnership agreements'' signals anything more than pious wishes at best, or yet another cul-de-sac for effective workforce representation at worst.
In the mid-1970s Tony Benn when Minister for Energy secured for the trade unions a Memorandum of Understanding which appears to differ little in essence from what has been announced today. Yet the offshore oil sector was to become the template for a ''union-free'' Britain which the previous administrations sought so hard to create. For over two decades the oil companies proved themselves to be masters of union-avoidance techniques, even with the Memorandum of Understanding in place. The trade unions in the North Sea have for their part been hamstrung with inter-union rivalries which persist to this day.
The Offshore Industry Liaison Committee (OILC) led the wave of sit-ins on offshore platforms in two ''summers of discontent'' in 1989 and 1990, seeking recognition for trade unionism and a greater say in safety, in the aftermath of Piper Alpha. As an organisation it is not to be part of this new ''partnership''. Yet today, the OILC is the largest trade union in the North Sea and has been a major force in the debate over offshore safety. It remains outside the TUC because of seemingly undying inter-union rivalries previously referred to.
Many would regard it as an authentic voice of offshore unionism and insofar as it remains excluded, any understanding reached with employers may be no more than a tactical attempt to co-opt union compliance in an offshore industry which fears that the Employment Relations Act may at last make union recognition a potential reality.
In an era of imposed wage cuts and redundancies offshore, any understanding with employers will be meaningless and partial unless the trade unions themselves can overcome their differences and build a unified structure to match the employers, not just in partnership and co-operation, but where necessary in contest over legitimate workforce concerns about safety and conditions of work.
Dr Charles Woolfson,
Senior Lecturer in Industrial
Relations,
Faculty of Social Sciences,
University of Glasgow.
August 12.
