Strike Ballot For North Sea Workers

North Sea oil workers are to be balloted for strikes after talks failed to break a deadlocked row over shift patterns and pay.

The GMB said progress had been made in a meeting with the Offshore Contractors Association, but not enough for any proposals to be put to union members.

National officer David Hulse said: We will now have to proceed with organising an official ballot for industrial action as the members asked us to do in a consultative ballot earlier this year.

We remain available for talks should the employers want to pull back from going ahead with the unilateral changes to working practices that has provoked this dispute.''

Unions are opposed to planned changes to working rotas, rates of pay, sick pay, and holiday patterns the employers are seeking in the wake of the decline in oil prices.