Unite win for Grangemouth

Unite turned up the heat on Labour politicians this weekend — and secured a commitment for £200m of additional investment in Grangemouth after months of campaigning.

General secretary Sharon Graham led a demonstration of Grangemouth workers which placed 400 hard hats at the doorstep of Scottish Labour’s conference in Glasgow. These symbolised the 400 jobs that will be directly lost if Grangemouth refinery is allowed to close.

Graham said Grangemouth was a “ready market” for sustainable aviation fuel. She highlighted that chancellor Rachel Reeves acknowledged the need for a huge increase in supply of this product, and asked: “If this fuel is not coming from refineries in Britain, where is it coming from? Are they actually suggesting that we import green aviation fuel? Is that the great transition that we have before us, the transition of our jobs? We say no!”

After Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer ended weeks of inaction with his promise of investment, Unite vowed to continue the fight to Keep Grangemouth Working.

Workers entered the conference centre on Friday to deliver the hard hats to Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, laying them at the entrance to the secure zone before being turned away by security guards.

Addressing the crowd outside Glasgow’s Scottish Event Campus, Graham said, “As redundancy notices rained down on Grangemouth a matter of days ago, most politicians were silent. They hid, hoping no-one would see and notice their inaction, hoping it would be forgotten and hoping we would move on.

“Well let’s say very clearly, to the politicians here today, to Labour and the SNP, if you throw these workers on the scrapheap it will never be forgotten, it will never be forgiven and we will not move on. Unite is not going to give up this fight. We are going to be on their backs, and we are going to say to them, you must back Grangemouth, you must back Scotland.”

Labour had abandoned its promise of investing “hundreds of millions of pounds” in saving the jobs at Grangemouth. But when Starmer spoke at the conference on Sunday, two days after Unite’s protest, he announced that the UK government would put £200 million of funding from the National Wealth Fund into Grangemouth.

Reacting to the announcement, Sharon Graham said, “This is welcome news after months of our campaign and supported by the community of Grangemouth, Keir Starmer and the UK government have finally listened. This needs to be the start not the end in delivering a real workers’ transition for Grangemouth.

“Following this announcement, it is essential that all stakeholders come together to put the meat on the bones and that this investment counts for jobs and our security. Clear timescales will be important as well as details on jobs.”

Starmer said the funding would be available for “co-investment with the private sector”, and was intended for bringing new businesses to Grangemouth in areas such as bioengineering, biofuels, or hydrogen energy.

Unite had previously welcomed joint UK and Scottish Government funding for Project Willow, which is exploring long-term options for the refinery site, as well as a £25m just transition fund from Holyrood.

But significant uncertainty remains for the current workforce. At the demonstration, Chris Hamilton, Unite’s convener at Grangemouth (pictured below), told UniteLive: “We’re in a situation now where on the site it’s grim, we’re months away from the site closing. The Grangemouth workforce at the refinery are now only weeks away from losing their jobs.”

He drew attention to the current lack of green jobs in Scotland, and stressed that a just transition would require new opportunities to have “the pay, terms and conditions that the Grangemouth refinery workforce currently enjoy”.

Unite Scotland secretary Derek Thomson added, “We’re putting the people first — while they’re debating their policies in there, we’re showing how many people are going to be affected by their inaction.”

By Conrad Landin

Photos by Mark Thomas

Find out more about Unite’s Grangemouth campaign here.