Workers' Fight workplace bulletin editorials, 28 April 2008

Grangemouth oil refinery workers went on strike this Sunday and Monday for 48 hours over the attack on their pensions.

The refinery owner, Ineos, had announced that it would close the workers' pension scheme to new entrants from 1 August, and cut pensions for existing members.

What is more, workers would in future have to contribute 6% of their wages to the scheme - whereas before, their pension contributions were waived in exchange for wages paid below the industry average. So Ineos is now also asking workers to take a 6% wage cut!

And as if this was not bad enough, it turns out that Ineos is planning to cut the 1,200-strong workforce by half - by, in the bosses' language - "modernising", the refinery.

This attack on pensions is all the more scandalous, because, after Ineos bought the refinery from BP in 2005, it used an accounting trick which allowed it to reduce the previous estimate of the pension fund's value by 40m.

Yet despite that, today the fund is still in surplus. And even if it was not, Ineos is the world's third largest chemical group, with over 400m profit last year - so it can easily afford decent pensions for its workers! Its owner is Jim Ratcliffe, number 25 on the "Rich 1,000 List" with a personal fortune of 2.3bn!

As for the threat supposedly posed to the oil supply by the strike - something which Ineos has used as blackmail against the workers and the union - this is pure nonsense! There are 70 days worth of fuel reserves in Britain. So even if Ineos closed the refinery for a week or more, as well as the Forties pipeline, this would still not threaten supplies - that is, provided the government does its job of ensuring that the reserves are actually made available.

Above all, Ineos, echoed by most of the media, is trying to use public opinion to force workers into agreeing to this daylight robbery of their pensions. The Grangemouth workers are right not to fall for this. And they deserve all of our support.

To apparently alleviate the "credit crunch", the Bank of England (BOE) is to open another lending facility for the big banks. But according to financial commentators, this new bail-out does not include what has already been lent - a total amount which is veiled in secrecy.

However, the greed of the banks is such that there is every indication that this amount is likely to be doubled. Already figures of up to 100bn or more have been mentioned.

One of the (few) conditions put by the BOE on this lending was that the banks should also go to their shareholders for more money. But no amount was specified, nor was any mechanism put in place to force shareholders to cough up.

So, for instance, the Royal Bank of Scotland - RBS - which is to be one of the big borrowers from the BOE, has just asked its shareholders for 12bn. Yet this same bank, well into the credit crunch last October, actually found the where-with-all to fork out 56bn in order to buy part of one of the largest Dutch banks, ABN. Why was it not told that before it can be given any hand-outs from the BOE, that it should get that 56bn back, one way or another - like by reselling ABN? Yet, on the contrary, RBS has actually announced that, thanks in part to this merger with ABN, it will be axing 7,000 jobs! So the BOE is not only, in effect, subsiding an acquisition by RBS, but it is also promoting job cuts!

One may ask why on earth it is that such a bank needs to be getting taxpayers' money pumped into it by the billions in the first place. It owns Natwest, the Queen's own bank, Coutts, and even Angel Trains, among many other assets. But of course, that is the nature of this system. The poor pay while the rich play. And despite the so-called "credit crunch" the rich do not seem to be suffering much.

As the Sunday Times Rich List asserts, "the global billions ride the storm"! The richest 1,000 people in Britain have increased their wealth by 14.7% since last year, having quadrupled their wealth since Labour came to power 11 years ago.

The total wealth of this top 1,000 comes to "only" 412 billion. So if someone has to pay for the crisis by providing credit and so-called "liquidity", then why not ask them?