Unions are calling for an emergency meeting and parliamentary debate in a bid to avert strikes at an oil refinery and petrochemical site in Scotland.
Workers at the Ineos site in Grangemouth started an overtime ban and work to rule yesterday in support of Unite convener Stevie Deans.
He was suspended, then reinstated, by the company over allegations linked to his involvement in the bitter row over the selection of a Labour candidate in Falkirk, where he is chairman of the local constituency party.
Unite accused Ineos of trying to “provoke” a strike, which it warned would be “hugely damaging” to the UK economy.
A previous three-day stoppage at the site in 2008 was said to have cost hundreds of millions of pounds in lost production and other knock-on effects.
Workers have voted heavily in favour of action up to and including a strike – and Unite officials said they had not ruled out calling for a walkout.
Pat Rafferty, the union’s Scottish regional secretary, said the firm was using the Stevie Deans dispute as an excuse to introduce sweeping reforms, including pension changes, job losses, an end to collective bargaining and worse pay and conditions for new employees.
“It is holding Stevie Deans hostage, and playing Russian roulette with fuel supplies,” he said.
“We are trying to make the company see sense, but we are not ruling anything out at this stage.”
The firm has warned the site will close by 2017 without new investment and savings in running costs.
Meanwhile, Ineos said one of its subsidiaries, the Vinyl Acetate Monomer facility at Hull, is to close, with the loss of 18 jobs, blaming the “high cost” of products from Grangemouth.