Due to the ongoing replacement of quality jobs with cheap labour by employers in the North Sea, the maritime and oil and gas unions affiliated to global federations IndustriAll and the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) joined forces to develop an industrial and political strategy to challenge the issue.

The group represents workers from Denmark, Norway and the UK.

In both the oil-service sector and within the subsea-contractor segment there are still companies that are not covered by collective bargaining agreements, something the North Sea oil and gas supply chain and hubs group intends to address.

In the maritime sector ‘social dumping’ in the region has expanded through the employment of non-European workers resulting in unfair competition and redundancies for local workers.

The oil service, subsea and maritime supply companies situated in the North Sea continental shelves are considered the main targets of the campaign to expose the industry’s part in the ‘race to the bottom’ which has seen the loss of thousands of British, Danish and Norwegian national’s jobs, estimated to be over 50,000, according to ITF.

“These companies are over-eager to terminate traditional contracts. The competition to cut costs and reduce working conditions in this region is stark. The sheer level of the cutbacks being made is having a severe impact on health and safety of workers,” IndustriALL general secretary, Jyrki Raina, said.

“The Oil and Gas Authority are talking about the desire to retain people and skills in the sector and to retrain and redeploy the workforce, but we need to see real commitment to that in terms of action,” General secretary of the ITF, Steve Cotton, said.