Job cuts and an increase in working hours for remaining workers sound like something from the nineteen twenties or thirties, but they are becoming a fact of life for staff at Ineos Chlor, the Belgian chlorine producer, which has interests across the north Cheshire chemical manufacturing towns.
Ineos bought the giant I.C.I. Runcorn plant last March and within months found itself locking horns with the Environment Agency over failure to build a wall designed to retain chemical spills. Ineos then threatened to begin legal action against I.C.I. over thirty years lack of investment in the Runcorn plant. A recent leak of chlorine gas has done nothing to instil any confidence into local people who, are becoming cynical about promises of improved safety.
Ineos Chlor claim they will need £635m to bring the site up to scratch and even if the legal action is successful, they will still require a very large government handout to make up the necessary funds. Without this money, Ineos Chlor have warned the site will die a slow death. No doubt it will, but not before the employees have been sacrificed on the high altar of unfettered capitalism and cast aside.
Ineos Chlor have just announced ninety redundancies at those parts of I.C.I. which produce the chemicals used in plastic manufacture, known as European Vinyls Corporation.
The job losses will include scientific research posts as well as production workers and will affect Runcorn and the nearby village of Helsby. Another 300 staff will face changes in their terms of employment which will increase their working week from 36 to 40 hours. E.V.C. will also look at changes in salaries, bonus schemes, health insurance and pensions.
This 'restructuring' will save the grasping parasites who currently run the operation £3 million a year. A spokesman for the firm said the moves were designed to streamline the company and help it survive difficult market conditions. No mention of any sacrifices being made by the bosses who have managed to poison the village of Weston, which is old enough to have been mentioned in the Domesday book and a section of marshland which was a haven for wildlife.
G.M.B. union officials fear these job losses will be the first in a chain reaction which will affect the interdependent chemical companies in the north west.
Not one local councillor or Blairite M.P. for the area has yet seen fit to utter a word of condemnation about the job losses or the greed of the company's directors. That would be asking too much.
In the meantime, two sizeable leaks of chlorine gas have brought Runcorn to a standstill and there is now a fear that work to construct a second road bridge across the Mersey will stir up what has been described as a cocktail of dangerous chemicals which have lain on the river bed for decades and threaten resurgent wildfowl colonies.