Dawn of new age of industrial unrest | Web encouraged every skilled man to strike | Comment: British Jobs and British Workers | ‘We’re used and abused by greedy employers’ | Q&A: British industrial strikes | Phrase that has come back to haunt Brown

It looks a little like the 1970s as acrimonious, wildcat sympathy strikes spread across the country. But yesterday’s clashes at oil refineries and power stations are definitely a product of the here and now.

Here is the single European market and globalisation hitting the world of work in a powerful way. Work is needed in one country and a company from another is able to win the contract and supply foreign labour for the task. In the earlier stages of Europeanisation and globalisation capital was global and labour local; now they are increasingly both global.

And right now unions feel that multinationals are flexing their muscles and making full use of extra flexibility afforded them by two relatively recent European Court rulings. These — the Viking and Laval rulings — effectively allowed companies to undermine existing collective agreements in countries where they undertake work. Both cases said that trade union action against overseas companies that had refused to apply pay and conditions of a host country had infringed the freedom of the company to operate freely under European Union law.

The rulings came in late 2007, not long after Gordon Brown’s somewhat quixotic pledge to deliver British jobs for British workers. Now we are seeing a spate of large construction projects in Britain that are using some element of drafted-in labour — as opposed to hiring migrants who are already here.

Companies bringing in foreign labour argue that it is a question of skills and say they are importing specialities. British workers employed alongside them on the construction projects argue that while welding and other such tasks are skilled, those skills are not the preserve of foreign workers.

An electricity linesman’s job was apparently advertised in Northern Ireland recently, stating that knowledge of Portuguese was essential.

If the unions are correct and the companies are using their flexibility simply because they are able to, rather than because of an acute shortage of construction skills in Britain, then they are choosing a pretty bad time to do it.

With tens of thousands of jobs being lost every day, tensions are running high. And with large infrastructure projects offering one of the few pockets of growth in the economy, workers are desperate to hold on to employment opportunities.

British construction workers are often reasonably mobile, often working away on site in the week and returning home at weekends. Part of this is inevitable if the work is with large, one-off projects but the practice has intensified over recent years as the world of work has become more fragmented. As we are reminded of the Seventies with images of bitter protests, we may also be reminded that back then employment was a far more monolithic affair. Outsourcing and subcontracting were rarely practised and much work was done locally.

Local employment and the encouragement of it is now becoming a priority issue for many councils as they reel from huge job losses. They are increasingly warming to the idea that giving work to small local businesses is one of the best ways to keep money in the local economy.

On the broader national stage the anger at the use of foreign labour in preference to British workers is understandable. But it is also dangerous; already we are seeing anti-immigration sentiments emerging.

Mr Brown and the European politicians will come under increasing pressure to reduce the wave of unrest that could pander to racism.

Europe will also be aware of the divisions and wave of anti-European feeling that its actions may be creating. In terms of the popularity and success of the European authorities this is way more damaging than ten years of banning the straight banana.

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