Wildcat walkout action continues

ENERGY WORKERS' PROTESTS 1. Grangemouth oil refinery, Central Scotland 2. Scottish Power's Longannet power station, Fife 3. Scottish Power's Cockenzie power station, East Lothian 4. Shell gas processing plant, St Fergus, Aberdeenshire 5. British Energy power station, Torness, East Lothian 6. Mossmorran chemical plant, Fife 7. Npower Aberthaw power station, south Wales 8. South Hook natural gas terminal, Milton Haven, Pembrokeshire 9. ICI chemical refinery at Wilton, Teesside 10. Corus steel plant near Redcar, Teeside 11. Scottish & Southern's Fiddler's Ferry power station, Cheshire 12. AES Kilroot power station, County Antrim 13. Marchwood power station, Hampshire Where are protests taking place?

Workers at Longannet power station are to continue wildcat strike action for a further 24 hours as the row over the use of foreign contractors escalates.

Unions in Scotland are holding mass meetings with about 2,500 workers.

Thousands of workers across the UK staged unofficial walkouts on Friday over the use of foreign staff at a Lincolnshire refinery.

In Scotland, the Ineos oil plant at Grangemouth and power stations at Longannet and Cockenzie were affected.

Contractors at Longannet voted to stay out on strike for 24 hours and return to hold another mass meeting at 0730 GMT on Tuesday.

Bobby Buirds of the Unite union warned that peace could be a distant prospect.

He said: "I can't say one way or the other whether there's going to be further action and if the lads believe things are developing to their benefit, there might be a change of heart but I don't see that at the moment."

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the wildcat strikes were "not defensible".

And Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy called on unions not to "escalate" the dispute.

The walkouts began after bosses at the Lindsey oil refinery brought in Italian and Portuguese contractors.

Unions said the jobs should have gone to British workers.

About 300 workers from the Ineos oil refinery at Grangemouth joined the protest on Friday.

They were followed by about 500 from the power station at Longannet in Fife and about 100 from Cockenzie power station in East Lothian.

Scottish Power said the walkout did not affect operations at either of the sites and that it was meeting senior members of all contractors to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.

Shell said about 180 contractors at the St Fergus gas terminal at Peterhead had stopped work, while at British Energy's Torness facility, about 80 workers have downed tools.

According to ExxonMobil, 40 workers contracted to Deborah Services Limited (DSL) have gone on strike at its ethylene plant at Mossmorran in Fife, along with colleagues at the Shell plant at Mossmorran.