Dozens of employees at Scotland's largest oil refinery have walked out in a wildcat strike following a row over pay.
Round 250 upkeep contractors downed instruments and joined an unofficial picket line at 7am exterior the Grangemouth refinery and petrochemical plant.
They stood throughout the A904, one of many fundamental entry roads to the enormous industrial web site, with a view to elevate consciousness of their dispute with the Engineering Development Business Affiliation (ECIA).
The peaceable protest prompted some minor tailbacks within the native space, with a number of tankers quickly unable to entry the positioning.
Grangemouth is certainly one of six refineries in Britain and provides two-thirds of the petrol and diesel for forecourts in Scotland.
The strikers are calling on ECIA to renew talks over an improved pay supply.
Contractors are certain by the "blue guide settlement" which units the phrases and situations of employment for the hourly paid engineering development workforce.
However employees really feel the phrases beforehand agreed by the Nationwide Settlement for the Engineering Development Business (NAECI) haven't saved tempo with hovering inflation.
In a pamphlet handed out to members of the general public, the group stated: "Right now's motion is in response to the ECIA's refusal to recognise the influence of the price of dwelling disaster.
"We obtained a 2.5 per cent pay rise in January and can obtain 2.5 per cent once more in January subsequent yr.
"Resulting from extraordinary occasions past our management, inflation is presently operating at 11.8 per cent.
"Many employers have acknowledged these occasions and have negotiated pay rises and one-off funds.
"Sadly, employees coated by the NAECI and people whose pay mirrors the NAECI are anticipated to get on with it.
"A few of us labored all through the pandemic to maintain the nation operating, a few of us had been made redundant.
"We accepted modifications to the settlement and took a pay freeze to assist the employers and to maintain the business shifting throughout lockdown.
"Now we're asking the ECIA to return again to the negotiating desk due to these as soon as in a lifetime occasions.
"Up to now, they've level clean refused. We can't enable this cavalier perspective to proceed."
An Ineos spokesman stated: "We are able to verify that quite a few contractors employed by third events are taking unofficial industrial motion on the Grangemouth web site as a part of a nationwide protest occasion.
"Our manufacturing and gas distribution operations are unaffected.
"The positioning has an excellent working relationship with the contracting firms and their workers at Grangemouth, together with these working beneath the NAECI settlement.
"We're upset that the protesters have chosen to make use of the Ineos Grangemouth web site as certainly one of their backdrops for his or her unofficial motion right this moment."
A Police Scotland spokesperson stated: “We're conscious of a protest at a premises on Inchyra Highway, Grangemouth.
"Highway closures have been put in place from Inchyra Highway to Boness Highway."
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