According to the Financial Times, this is the former prison ship that houses foreign workers employed at Lindsey Refinery, at Grimsby docks.
In the last few weeks fierce demonstrations and strikes have erupted across Britain over the issue of foreign labor. "Some 6,000 workers across over 20 construction sites at power stations and oil refineries took unofficial action as part of the dispute" from sites all across England, Scotland and Wales.
This all seems to have ignited around some of the dealings at the Kent power station, which – as far as I can tell – has been subcontracting major labor contracts to firms who use foreign laborers exclusively, which of course has set off a firestorm over cheap labor moving in on the territory of the local workforce.
Tough times, tough economies, the borders of desperate capitalism bursting wide open at the seams.
Now, admittedly I know nothing about this situation. There are apparently a number of firms who have been granted contracts that UK labor unions claim have been dolling out work to non-British citizens: from Polish and Lithuanian construction workers to Italian and Portuguese, primarily.
The Socialist Worker made this comment: "Behind the rash of strikes in the construction industry lies a concerted attempt by multinational construction companies to tear up hard-won agreements covering the safety, wages and conditions on multi-million pound sites." In the same article they point to the Financial Times who reported "building bosses admitting to using the subcontracting system to try and hold down militancy in the industry." The real reason, Socialist Worker says groups of workers are being shipped in is to control the subcontracting system.
It's not a surprise, nor is it even remotely unfathomable.
But, labor politics aside, what caught my attention in all of this was the vessel one company has used to bring over Italian laborers and house them as well, moored on the docks for the duration of their contract.
According to this article, it is quite literally an old prison barge that's been converted into dismally cheap shelter. Not only is the interior what you mght expect of an old prison ship, but "Italian workers living there claimed they could not leave it without being attacked by angry locals." They are being vanned in to the sites for their protection.
Wow. Not only is it literally and functionally an old prison ship but by virtue of the violence looming on the outside of those walls they are even all the more confined there.
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