News

The UK and France are to strengthen their power connections with a new 75km-long 500MW electricity cable, laid through the Channel tunnel’s service tunnel by 2015.

Plans for undersea nuclear power reactors in the English Channel could see a boom in uptake of the technology.

Villagers affected by recent power cuts and the low voltage electricity supply could be in line for a rebate according to reports made to the Gazette.

A reader who has spoken with the power supplier EDF, has been informed that householders will be receiving a letter within the next 10 days and the company will be making a refund of £50 for the power cuts and the low voltage supply to those affected.

According to the information forwarded to us, the rebate will be made by EDF who are the fuel suppliers to this area, irrespective of to which provider residents pay their bills.

However, EDF have said in a statement that the £50 payment can be claimed by customers who have experienced four or more power cuts of more than 3 hours in a year.

Contact EDF Energy if you think you are eligible, their address is
Edf Energy
Customer Relations,
Fore Hamlet,
IP3 8AQ

Dover port workers who went on strike last year to try to save their jobs from being moved to the private sector saw the first of a planned 190 jobs transferred yesterday.

A spokeswoman for the Port of Dover said about 68 jobs were outsourced on Monday (5 January).

Several hundred port workers staged two strikes in November in protest at the employers plans to transfer the jobs to the private sector, but a third strike planned for December was called off following what were described as "useful discussions" between the Unite union and the Dover Harbour Board.

The transfer of the remaining 122 jobs are the subject of talks between Unite and the Harbour Board.

Mooring staff jobs are scheduled to be transferred on 1 February.

 

Union bosses at Eurostar sparked warnings that staff may strike in the run-up to Christmas over rosters which have been branded 'unfair'.

Members of both the RMT and TSSA trade unions have voted in favour of industrial action, which they hope will force Eurostar to rethink employee working patterns.

Gerry Doherty, TSSA general secretary, said that Eurostar was not dividing up the work fairly between French and British workers. "All our members want is for weekend duties to be shared equally among train managers on both sides of the channel," he said.

"Nobody wants to see services disrupted as Christmas approaches, but our members are telling us that they cannot accept unfair and imposed rosters that undermine their work-life balance."

RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: "Our members have told the company very clearly that imposing unfair and unequal rosters is no way to reward staff who did all they could to help Eurostar get back to normal after the recent Channel Tunnel fire.

"We hope the company will now get back in step with its own policy, withdraw these imposed rosters and get back around the table with us to find a fair and equitable solution."

RMT members voted 60 to four in favour of striking while TSSA members voted 11 to four. If an agreement is not negotiated, a strike could be held any time in the three weeks to Christmas.

Eurostar said it was talking to the unions in a bid to resolve the dispute. It said the rosters and shift patterns were introduced after services were disrupted by the fire in September, and that they fully met the conditions of contract for all Eurostar UK train managers.

"We are extremely disappointed that our UK train managers have decided on this course of action and at this time, and we will make every effort to ensure our travellers face no further disruption in the busy period up to Christmas and the New Year," said customer services director Marc Noaro.

Members of Unite, the UK's largest trade union, will demonstrate outside Dover Port's offices on Monday (27 October) to help save jobs from being outsourced.

The members working at the Port of Dover will also be balloted for industrial action to prevent 190 jobs being outsourced.

The port's Chief Executive has stated they are not prepared to negotiate on their plans to outsource work, but only inform the union of their proposals.

Jane Jeffery, Unite Regional Industrial Organiser, said: "Our members have voted overwhelmingly in a consultative ballot to support an industrial action ballot to protect their employment with the Port of Dover. Our members are determined to protect their terms and conditions of employment, and most importantly pensions, which will undoubtedly be threatened by these outsourcing plans."

Unite National Secretary for Docks and Waterways, Brendan Gold, who will be speaking at the demonstration said: "Dover Port management have forgotten the huge contribution our members make to run the port efficiently. To outsource port security at a time when security is of vital importance is negligent in the extreme.

"Dover is a trust port which has a responsibility to its workforce and the local community. Clearly the port management have ignored this important fact in their relentless drive for profit."

 

Speaking in the House of Commons yesterday (21 October) a local MP urged Ministers to plug a legislative "loophole" that allows foreign seafarers, sailing between British ports, to be paid less than £2 an hour.

Labour MP Gwyn Prosser for Dover called for the "exploitation" to be ended by ensuring such workers were entitled to the minimum wage.

Shipping minister Jim Fitzpatrick said: "Any changes to minimum wage legislation would need to be consistent with international law. We are trying to address this question."


 

In a speech to business leaders in Dover this week, Spencer Dale, the chief economist of the Bank of England warned that a further period of declines in property prices was likely.

"Homeowners and consumers face months of pain as the downturn in the housing market deepens and price rises for food and energy squeeze incomes," Mr Dale said on Wednesday (17 September).

"I recognise that this process of adjustment will be painful for many households," he continued in a speech at a Dover Chamber of Commerce breakfast meeting.

While a decline in the housing market, slowing consumer spending and tighter credit conditions push the economy towards recession, inflation, spurred by higher energy and food costs, reached an 11-year high. The Bank of England has kept the benchmark interest rate unchanged for the past five months.

"These risks are at present finely balanced," said Dale, who voted to keep interest rates unchanged at 5% this month. "A return to the remarkable stability of the past decade may not be in prospect. But neither is a return to the boom and bust of earlier years."

The UK will likely go through a period of "broadly flat" expansion and "relatively high" inflation, Dale stated, adding that growth will resume and inflation return to the bank's 2% target "in due course".

Consumer prices rose 4.7% in August from a year earlier, the most since records began in 1997, the Office for National Statistics said earlier this week. Bank of England Governor Mervyn King has said inflation will peak at around 5% in coming months.

A woman working for an East Kent employer yesterday won £5,000 in compensation after her boss kept breaking wind in front of her reports the Mirror.

Theresa Bailey, 43, from Deal complained to senior managers about the "laddish" behaviour among the men. She was the only woman on the firm's sales team.

Mrs Bailey said line manager David Nye regularly "lifted his right cheek" in her direction and broke wind.

The mother of three children was made to wear a badge saying "I'm simple" after after she failed to understand some functions on her computer. And she had a beach ball thrown at her head when she challenged sexist banter.

When she complained about the state of the communal loos at direct marketing firm Selectabase, in Deal, Kent, Mr Nye emailed a colleague: "That's why we don't employ women."

Her payout came after a tribunal ruled she would not have suffered the same treatment if she were a man.

She sent an email to company director Steve Selwood saying: "The number of times the person at my side would lift up his bottom off the chair and fart and think it's funny is unreal.

I am no prude but I do think there is a time and a place for that behaviour."

She told the hearing in Ashford: "I felt so humiliated, my heart sank."

Afterwards, a Selectabase spokesman said the firm had 12 years of excellent employee relations. A director of the company described the tribunal’s finding as unfair.

Dover has the highest petrol prices in the country, according to a Sunday Telegraph survey that exposes a North-South divide in fuel prices.

Motorists in the south pay up to £1.98 more to fill up their cars compared with those in northern England and Scotland.

Using the petrol price comparison website petrolprices.com, The Sunday Telegraph compared prices in 20 towns and cities across Britain.

The highest was in Dover, where unleaded petrol costs an average of 111.4p a litre, costing a motorist with an average-sized family car £61.30 to fill its tank.

In Edinburgh the cost was 108.5p a litre, or £59.70 for a tank, a difference of £1.60.

Differences in diesel prices were even greater, with a litre costing an average 118.6p in Edinburgh, compared with 122.2p in Dover – a difference of 3.6p a litre, or £1.98 per tank.

The pattern was repeated elsewhere in the country, with petrol in southern towns and cities costing more than towns in the north.