MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Gibraltar: MOD Employee's Walkout

At 10am on Monday workers in the MoD in Gibraltar staged a walkout.
The stoppage formed part of a campaign of selective industrial
action against the MOD'S contractorisation policies, whereby work
done in-house is transferred to outside companies.

For the first time, the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) members who operate the dockyard generating station joined in. This supplies military installations, the airport, and MoD residential accommodation and the controlled shutdown resulted in a four hour power cut. The rest of Gibraltar was not affected.

Union members have received a circular which lists ten points of discord, such as the use of transport contractors to carry out work previously undertaken by MT drivers, outsourcing of work, discrimination between MOD local employees and private contractors on parking facilities and, what they term, "saving measures forcefully introduced causing great anxiety and discontent

Clearly, the issue widens from the privatisation concern, with the union saying that the MOD has not given them satisfactory responses - with some of the issues going back over the last 3 years. They say that "enough is enough."

Several hundred workers marched to the Governor's residence where a delegation handed in a letter explaining their grievances and were invited to a short meeting with Sir Francis Richards. The crowd then moved across the road to the office of the Chief Minister, who came out and stated that it was the Government of Gibraltar policy not to privatise jobs and that they supported the MoD workers fully.

They then marched down Main Street to Casemates Square where they were addressed by the branch secretary of the TGWU and the protest ended peacefully.