Billionaire Ineos Grangemouth boss, Jim Ratcliffe wants to axe the morning tea break for his workers in Scotland in a bid to save money - as he leads a 'life of luxury'.
One worker said: “Ratcliffe enjoys a life of luxury. We hear he spends a lot of time on his yacht in the south of France. Yet he’s trying to deny his workers a simple tea break. I’m sure he gets 10 minutes for a cup of tea in the morning.”
Managers at the petrochemical plant want rid of the 10am tea break for 1,200 staff because they claim it leads to “high levels of unproductive time” in the mornings. They say it’s not being scrapped, but “rescheduled” to the end of the shift, and workers will get an extra half hour’s pay per day as compensation.
Another worker said: “We get to work early and do hard, physical work in all conditions. By 10am, we’re often in dire need of a break. Some guys use the time for a cup of tea. Others have a bite to eat. With winter coming, it will be a time when we can simply heat up after working in the freezing cold.”
In 2013 in a dispute over the suspension of a shop steward, he closed the plant and vowed to walk away for good unless workers accepted major cuts to their pensions and conditions. Staff with families to feed gave in to Ratcliffe’s demands and the plant reopened.
More recently, Ratcliffe has been an enthusiastic backer of fracking in Scotland, which is currently banned by the SNP Government. He is shipping huge cargos of fracked shale gas from America to be processed at Grangemouth, with the first shipment arriving last month.
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