A colleague and I were supposed to be heading up to a meeting with our members in Yorkshire, but the snow has put paid to this. It's a shame. With economic events so fast-moving these forums give us a chance to find out in real time, as it were, what is happening to members.
At one of these meetings last month a few companies mentioned that they were starting to have industrial relations problems. I would hesitate to call this a trend, but with companies being forced to make redundancies or asking their workers to cut back hours or pay, it was probably inevitable that some disputes would follow. Which bring us to the situation at the Total-owned Lindsey Oil Refinery in Lincolnshire and the Wild Cat sympathy strikes that have followed....
This is a difficult and emotive, issue, but the last thing manufacturers need is for the country to go back to the bad old days of illegal industrial action and disruption.
Beyond this however an important issue is at stake. It is easy to say that we should give priority to British workers. But the free movement of labour is at the heart of EU law; undermine that and we run the risk of retaliation from other EU countries (some Italian politicians are already talking about tit-for-tat measures). In the long-run this would be a disaster for British business, workers and consumers. Protectionism doesn't work.