WORKERS who were laid off after the loss of a £250m oil rig contract have won a settlement of more than £400,000 from their former employer, The Northern Echo can reveal.
About 130 former employees of Cleveland Bridge pursued a claim against the engineering company for loss of earnings, after being given only a few days’ notice that they were losing their jobs on the SeaDragon project, in January last year.
Last night, it was revealed that after a tribunal, the Darlington company will have to pay between £420,000 and £440,000, which will equate to between £2,500 and £4,500 per person.
The GMB union, which pursued the claim on behalf of the redundant workers, hailed the outcome as an excellent result.
The workers were taken on in response to Darlingtonbased Cleveland Bridge’s major part in the construction of the SeaDragon oil and gas platform, at Haverton Hill on Teesside – the largest project of its type in the UK for more than a generation.
After being awarded to the Tees Alliance Group in November 2006, the contract was pulled mid-way through the deal early last year, despite the rig being nearly a third complete, after offshore company SeaDragon relocated work to Singapore.
The 130 redundant workers have since pursued a claim for the lack of 90 days consultation, claiming they should have been given that amount of notice, as required by law, before being made redundant.
The Northern Echo can now reveal they have been awarded up to £440,000 by a tribunal, after a four-day hearing in Leeds in June, where the workers were represented by Thompsons Solicitors.
Jimmy Skivington, regional organiser for the GMB who has represented the workers during the dispute, said he is pleased with the outcome.
“This is an excellent result, and is something that has been going on for a long time, since SeaDragon made the absolutely criminal decision to take the work away,” he said.
“Of course, it won’t compensate for the wages the lads would have had from this project, but it does help.
“It also proves the point that companies have got to consider and discuss redundancy situations properly.”
No one at Cleveland Bridge was available for comment last night.
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