Job market nationalism on the rise as crisis bites[fr][de] 

The UK government is preparing to announce new "employers' guidelines" that will remind firms seeking public contracts of their "corporate social responsibility" to use British workers if possible, the British press reported.

Last week, ministers stepped in to defuse a row over British workers after a series of wildcat strikes broke out in support of workers at the Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire. 

French oil giant Total, which runs the refinery, US engineering contractor Jacobs Engineering and Irem, an Italian subcontractor, have been under fire for hiring Italian and Portuguese workers at the Humber estuary site. 

According to reports in the British press, protests are on the rise against companies that employ foreign workers because unemployment is on the rise. For example, two Alstom subcontractors at Staythorpe power station in Nottinghamshire use hundreds of Spanish workers, while another two subcontractors on the Isle of Grain in Kent have brought in Polish workers. 

A spokesperson for Alstom denied that the company was discriminating against British workers and even insisted that the French group had asked its subcontractors to consider hiring British workers if new staff were needed. 

Elsewhere, the first workers to fall victim of the economic crisis also appear to be foreigners. 

Czech Republic, Romania sending foreigners home 

In the Czech Republic, the government has been offering free plane tickets and 500 euros for foreign workers who voluntarily agree to return home after losing their jobs, an initiative which has triggered criticism in Brussels (EurActiv 11/02/09). 

Recently asked by EurActiv whether the policy amounted to protectionism, Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolánek said the workers had to leave anyway because they were not from EU countries and did not have visas. 

In Romania, hundreds of Chinese workers are currently protesting outside their embassy in Bucharest. They are trying to return home after their employers, Romanian construction firms, failed to pay them. 

Romanian companies recently recruited thousands of workers from Asia to work in the country's booming construction sector. But in recent months, the sector has been in deep crisis and foreign workers are no longer needed. 

Gabriel Ghelmegeanu, an official at the Romania-China Chamber of Commerce, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that "hundreds if not thousands" of Chinese workers were stranded in Romania. 

European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) chairman John Monks commented on the dispute at the Lindsey oil refinery in North Lincolnshire. 

Monks declared: "We do not yet know all the details of the contractual arrangements made in the United Kingdom regarding the Lindsey oil refinery. But it is apparent that, while we support strongly the free movement of labour, we need clearer and stronger traffic rules in the European Union which guarantee equal treatment of workers regardless of nationality, and that collective agreements are fully respected by employers." 

"Some employers are undercutting such collective agreements, and workers' anger should be directed at them and not at the migrant workers. ETUC is calling for a revised Posting of Workers Directive and a social progress protocol attached to the European Treaties to counter recent adverse decisions of the European Court of Justice, which permit employers to ignore established agreements and, in effect, give them a license to undercut wages and conditions," Monks continued.