[Marxism] British Wildcat Strike Wave?

[nada]

It is very complicated an issue for the left.

This is not, strictly speaking, a strike against "immigrants". It's more 
a strike, it seems, against "migrants". In the sense that these are 
workers brought into UK oil refineries for a specific time and 
job...like a guest worker program in the US but industrial in nature.

One of the larger issues is that the EU rules allows for the total open 
borderish transfer of workers from any low paying EU country to any 
higher-paying one. The huge boom in the British economy over the last 15 
years or so has given rise to a large increase in outright immigration 
(500,000 Poles, for example, living in Britain) taking lower paying 
industrial jobs, and breeding a corresponding rise in anti-immigrant 
xenophobia.

In this case, the issue is why were not British workers hired from this 
contract job, why bring in workers from Italy? Much contradictory 
information is flying around. I believe the Times article notes that the 
workers are "paid the same" as the workers at the refinery but mentions 
no payments in terms of benefits and other items that would be in a 
standard union contract. Clearly this is also a form of union busting as 
members of British building trades were therefor *excluded* from 
consideration of employment by the Italian contractor.

The British SWP has a half-way decent article on this but it sorely 
lacking in serious analysis IMO. European immigration and work rules 
should be a discussion item here.

David