British workers voted on Thursday to end a week-long unofficial strike over the use of foreign labor at a French-owned oil refinery that sparked sympathy protests across Britain.
Maintenance and construction workers at the Total-owned Lindsey plant in eastern England will return to work on Monday after accepting a union-backed deal that will give British skilled workers 102 new jobs at the site, reported Reuters.
"We've no grievance against the foreign workers, it's the laws that need to be sorted out properly from the bottom up to create a level playing field," said Stewart Roe, a tattooed 61-year-old pipe fitter from the nearby city of Hull.
Industrial unrest is intensifying across Europe as fears grow over the impact of the economic downturn, putting politicians appealing against protectionism at odds with workers worried about job security.
The dispute over the use of Portuguese and Italian contractors at a time of surging unemployment triggered several sympathy protests across Britain. Workers complained that foreign companies were overlooking skilled British workers.
"We would like to highlight that we have not, and will not, discriminate against British companies and British workers," Total said in a statement.
Although they have not organized the strikes, British unions hope most of those sympathy protests will cease after the Lindsey vote.
But they have said there could be more action at other sites where foreign skilled workers have been drafted in, especially where the foreign workers are accepting lower pay than Britons.
There is also a danger of copycat action in Europe, where laws enshrining the free movement of labor have allowed millions to migrate to work.
The left-wing leader of Italy's biggest union said such labor disputes could spread and become racist.
"I understand it (the British strike), but I think we have to be careful, because if unemployment is used against workers from other countries -- never mind if they are Italian or not -- this is a very delicate issue," Guglielmo Epifani of the General Confederation of Italian Workers told Reuters. [nL5682570].
"It would mean Italians could only work in Italy, English in England and the French in France," he said in an interview late on Wednesday.
The Lindsey dispute started last week when British contract workers in the welding and machine-engineering trades launched protests against the employment of about 200 Italian and Portuguese on the construction of a new plant.
The strike has embarrassed Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who pledged "British jobs for British workers" in 2007. Many protesters held placards bearing that slogan.
Brown, currently urging nations around the world not to retreat into protectionism as the global economy weakens, is now under pressure to ensure local workers are not excluded from contracts on British soil.
"Lindsey is part of a much wider problem that will not go away," said Derek Simpson, joint general secretary of Britain's biggest union, Unite.
"There are still employers who are excluding UK workers from even applying for work on construction projects.
"No European worker should be barred from applying for a British job and absolutely no British worker should be barred from applying for a British job."
Brown is also wary of alienating the unions that provide much of his ruling Labor party's funding and grassroots support in the run-in to what is already likely to prove a tough election, due by May 2010.