PARLIAMNTARY COLUMN

RMT helpline 0800 376 3706 :: march 2019 :: RMTnews 9 Parliamentary Column Offshore oil and gas companies are so often in the news talking about decommissioning plans and the move to green energy sources that it is sometimes easy to forget that there is currently an efficiency drive underway in the North Sea to recover up to 20 billion barrels at the lowest possible cost. RMT members in the offshore sector will be all too familiar with the actions taken by employers since the oil price crashed in 2014 to make them work longer for less, particularly the imposition of the 3-on 3-off shift pattern on contractor staff which makes up 76 per cent of the workforce in the North Sea. In this increasingly commercialised climate, workers and their unions rightly defend safety standards, including those areas where there is long standing disagreement. Top of this list remains helicopter transport. RMT and Unite support an independent public inquiry into offshore helicopter transport safety. The Transport Select Committee recommended this in 2014 but the Coalition government rejected it. That’s why I secured a Commons debate on the issues and worked closely with RMT to spell out the facts (see full report on page 18). The record makes for distressing reading – 33 workers have lost their lives, and 65 rescued in three fatal and three non-fatal incidents since February 2009. The most recent fatalities occurred on 29 April 2016 when the rotor blades detached from a Super Puma H225 traveling off the Norwegian coast, with 11 offshore workers and two crew losing their lives. The Super Puma models involved in every one of these incidents have been grounded in the UK and Norwegian sectors since May 2016, yet the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) rode roughshod over trade unions to re-issue the Super Pumas airworthiness certificate in July 2017, a full year before the investigation into the Norwegian tragedy produced its final report. The Accident Investigation Board of Norway’s (AIBN) final report last summer could not say what had caused the cracks in the main rotor gear box which led to the catastrophe. The same component had failed and caused the death of 16 workers and crew off Peterhead on April 1 2009 and the AIBN drew that direct comparison. What did we hear from the government and the CAA in response to this? It was very limited and it appears to me that the CAA continue to fail to take proactive control of the Offshore Helicopter Safety Leadership Group to address offshore workers’ loss of confidence in helicopter safety. In the debate in February I demanded a full independent public inquiry and reform of the regulatory framework to ensure, that the helicopters offshore workers are trained to travel in, are as safe as possible. Unsurprisingly, the Conservative government does not support an independent inquiry but we extracted commitments around the role of the CAA which I am pursuing with the union. We will also work to build a cross-party consensus in support of a public inquiry to make the changes that offshore workers and their trade unions have been demanding for years. With commercial pressure on contractors across the offshore oil and gas industry again rising, the UK government can no longer ignore the safety of offshore helicopter transport. Alex Cunningham Labour MP for Stockton North DEMAND OFFSHORE HELICOPTER INQUIRY social and economic imperative that demands action. SNP MSP Alex Neil said that the Scottish government should explore “setting up a dedicated company instead of trying to sell the facility to another company as a branch operation”, with both public and private sector funding. Labour’s James Kelly, who secured the debate, backed RMT’s calls for full public ownership of the site and the electrification of the line from Glasgow. “Along with the other MSPs in the chamber, I am asking for government intervention now,” he said. Springburn MSP Bob Doris of the SNP accused Gemini of a “dereliction of duty” in not seeking alternative work to be done at St Rollox. Responding to the debate, Transport Secretary Michael Matheson said that it was “disappointing” that Gemini had refused to postpone or delay its consultation period. He spoke in support of “repurposing” St Rollox to become a “hub” for “heavy rail and heavy engineering work in the future”. He said that the Scottish government had “directly commissioned” Network Rail to “evaluate whether electrification of the line into the site would support its continued use for heavy rail purposes”. But he said that “the proposed electrification cannot happen at the drop of a hat”. In a debate the following day, Mr Matheson said that “neither ScotRail—which has existing capacity in its own engineering workshops—nor Network Rail requires the site at present”. Pressed by James Kelly on whether the contract for maintaining Class 170 Turbostars could be awarded to St Rollox, Mr Matheson said that “the decision on where the work should go is for Porterbrook, not ScotRail, as it owns the rolling stock”.