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Landin in Scotland Big oil companies across the world have failed to learn the lessons of Piper Alpha

THE nightmare of July 6 1988 is etched into minds across all of Aberdeen. The explosion on the Piper Alpha oil platform took the lives of 167 offshore workers and rescue servicemen.

But when Australian oil worker Troy Carter visited the memorial to the dead earlier this month, he was warning that it could still take more. Because, he argued, big oil companies across the world have failed to learn the lessons of the Scottish tragedy.

Carter’s story is extraordinary. He has now spent almost 500 days on strike in a David and Goliath struggle with one of the world’s largest oil firms.

In July last year ExxonMobil and its contractor UGL laid off hundreds of workers in order to re-engage them on inferior contracts.

Now 15 workers are left picketing, determined not to give up in spite of the hardship that comes from being out of work for so long. Their dispute has shifted from a battle for their jobs to a war to stop oil firms rolling back conditions and safety across the world.

Hosted by Unite’s formidable Aberdeen organiser Tommy Campbell during a European tour to raise awareness of his dispute, Australian Manufacturing Workers Union rep Carter addressed a cross-union meeting on October 16. He told the gathered reps and activists that the 35 skilled workers on the installation where he worked — on the Bass Strait south of Melbourne — had been replaced with a scab force of 150. “And they still aren’t getting the job done,” he sighed.

And the deskilling of the operation, along with the scrapping of contractual obligations for workers to only work seven days at a time, could have serious consequences for safety.

“I feel we owe a lot to the [Piper Alpha] tragedy and the 167 people who lost their lives,” Carter told the meeting.

“My fear is that if we have a tragedy then Piper Alpha becomes just another statistic.”

The following day, Unite’s Campbell took Carter, as well as me and catering grades rep Issy Sutherland, down to Aberdeen’s beautiful memorial to the 167 who lost their lives. We were joined there by Jake Molloy, the RMT’s offshore organiser.

Carter paid his respects in the rose garden dedicated to these fallen pioneers, and laid a wreath at the monument on behalf of Australian unions.

Molloy said Carter’s visit “should be a powerful message to workers all over that Troy’s story could be their story tomorrow, unless we remain vigilant and get organised.”

As I prepared to head back to Glasgow, I asked Carter what message he would send to Britain’s offshore workers at a time when cost-cutting is the order of the day.

“Stand up collectively with your workmates,” he said, “and don’t compromise your own safety because of the pressure and fake deadlines that the company might have set.”

The Unite offices in Aberdeen are resplendent with the banners of the local labour movement’s proud legacy in international solidarity. Nineteen Aberdonians, after all, travelled to fight Franco’s fascists in Spain, where five lost their lives.

Now the flags of Carter’s ExxonMobil dispute will be hoisted up there too — as a powerful reminder that those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.

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