Unite the union has announced its plan to re-ballot members employed at Balfour Beatty Engineering Services (BBES) for strike action over the employer-led attacks on the skills and pay of workers in the sector.

Potential strike action could hit some of the UK's key infrastructure projects, including power stations as disgruntled electricians, plumbers and heating and ventilating engineers down tools.

The new strike ballot, which opens on Thursday, 19 January, follows Balfour Beatty’s move to impose contractual changes on around 1,600 workers in BBES which will see the majority of skilled workers' pay cut by one third.

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Unite national officer, Bernard McAulay said: "Skilled craftsmen are angry that BBES are leading the attack on their jobs.

"Over the past six months we have seen huge unrest in construction sites all over the country because of this move. Unless BBES and their cohorts re-consider the way they are forcing through change there will be harmful strikes across the country.

"Good industrial relations involves negotiating change in a constructive way, instead BBES are imposing an employer’s charter on an unwilling workforce."

The company has told Unite that it if their staff refuse to sign up to the new inferior contracts they will sack them and replace them with agency labour. The ballot closes on Wednesday, 1 February.

Balfour Beatty Engineering Services, along with six other leading construction companies, intend to withdraw from five long-standing agreements and impose new semi-skilled grades with massive cuts in pay.

The re-ballot in BBES also follows months of protests by thousands of rank and file construction workers outside sites up and down the country, including Sellafield, Grangemouth and Ratcliffe power stations, Blackfriars and Kings Cross station and Lindsey Oil Refinery.

(CD/GK)