In the area where I work there are two oil refineries and two LNG terminals plus an oil storage facility. Recently due to the economic crisis workers at all of these sites have been made redundant, which is pretty much uniform across the UK and even world. With the prospect of work coming in the form of new building projects such as the planned gas fired power stations and nuclear power stations there is hope for workers who are out of work. However due to the recession the fat cats want to cut costs. As a result they will use the company who will charge the least. Its unfortunate that overseas companies can do the job for less than the British companies. This is where the problem began, workers recently made redundant were horrified when local jobs when to an Italian company who would use Italian and Portuguese labour.
 
A lot of my colleagues  regularly work overseas in places such as Kazakhstan, Dubai and other countries. When this work is offered people jump at the chance. Don’t blame the workers its not their fault at all. Its the system capitalism. To quote one of my colleagues “ foreign workers are in the same boat as us, if were offered work we would take it” the recent wave of redundancies had nothing to do with overseas workers “taking our jobs”. Its the whole greedy system that is to blame. In an the engineering industry especially with oil and gas industry, the job takes you world wide. Contractors can work all over the world. As im sure the media is pushing this on the front pages they are doing nothing to defend the foreign workers who also face threats of redundancy and unemployment. Who can blame the workers who just want to work and support their family? What Happened to international Worker solidarity?