Safety fears at strike-hit Beith plant supplying missiles to Ukraine

The Ministry of Defence confirmed there were three near misses involving mechanical handling equipment reported at the Beith depot over a four week period after strike action commenced.

There is also concern that a soldier was driving the truck when it went 'off the road' at the depot two days after the strike began.

GMB Scotland said that the incidents have raised "grave concern" over the incidents and warned the failure of management to resolve the dispute had "potential for disaster".

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The MoD said that all activities on the Beith site are being carried out "safely and securely".

Louise Gilmour, GMB Scotland secretary, said the safety of staff must be paramount and warned the work done at Beith was too sensitive to be undertaken by stand-in workers.

She said: “The implications of a near miss inside a munitions complex does not bear thinking about.

“The experience and expertise of our members is fundamental to the effective operation of this crucial complex and drafting in workers, civilian or military, who have no knowledge of the site or its systems holds the potential for disaster.

“The effective and safe running of this key plant is disrupted whenever our members take industrial action, during the action itself and in the days that follow it.

“It is beyond time for management to understand that, seriously engage with the workers and resolve this dispute.”

The Ministry of Defence said that the incident at the plant run by its specialist procurement arm Defence, Equipment & Support (DE&S) surrounded a forklift truck's wheel becoming stuck on wet grass when conducting a turn on a narrow road.

It said that while nobody was injured, the incident was reported to the DE&S's safety reporting system and "learning from experience (LFE) has been captured".

The MoD said the operator was fully experienced and licensed to operate the forklift which was not carrying a load.

Nearly 50 staff who handle Storm Shadow and Brimstone missiles assembled at the MoD munitions plant.

Pickets formed at the gates to the munitions depot during the industrial action which began after four days of previous targeted strikes failed to secure a resolution in a dispute over pay and bonuses.

The MoD has said it had safe contingency plans in place to minimise disruption and said the strike would have no effect on missile deliveries to Ukraine.

The union was told that the forklift almost overturned during the accident on September 13. The MoD insist that at no point was the vehicle at risk of overturning.

The GMB union suspended its plans to stage its strike in mid-August after the MoD agreed to talks at the conciliation service Acas but union leaders said they did so under "false pretences" and in "bad faith".

GMB Scotland later accused the Ministry of Defence of "playing games" and risking the trust of staff at the Scots arms depot which employs around 200 people.

The strike is an escalation of a dispute between the GMB’s members at DE&S – the MoD body that handles the military’s supplies, equipment and weapons – over their pay and bonuses. In June and July, it staged a handful of one-day stoppages, the first in the agency’s history.

Beith was established in 1943, as an MoD Munitions Depot during World War II. The site has facilities to store, maintain, modify, refurbish, produce and test weapons for all the armed services.

It is now part of the MoD's Defence Munitions wing which has over 900 military and civilian employees undertaking operative and craft roles across its seven UK locations.

The MoD say staff from other Defence Munitions establishments routinely work at other sites and they say that in this case they can confirm that staff from other locations have undertaken familiarisation visits to Beith recently to improve cross-site working generally, but also to ensure that defence operations are "safely and securely" conducted during the period of industrial action.

DE&S delivers equipment and support services to all the UK armed forces but staff are divided between craft workers, who assemble weapons, and non-craft colleagues, who move the arms around the site and load them for shipment.

Staff have complained about a two-tier workplace where the gap between the salaries of craft workers and non-craft colleagues, who support their work and prepare equipment for transport, has widened dramatically.

The GMB say extra payments and bonuses have been made to managers and craft workers in recent years but not to non-craft colleagues often earning less than £21,000 a year while being asked to take responsibility for multi-million pound military equipment.

The GMB estimates its members, who handle, load and transport the missiles, are up to £18,000 a year worse off than the specialist staff who assemble them. They say the pay gap between craft and non-craft workers has tripled in recent years.

Scottish Labour MSP Katy Clark is among those who have written to defence secretary Ben Wallace to demand the MoD urgently negotiate, citing the “vital work they do in supporting Ukrainian resistance to Russia's invasion”.

The MoD said the near missed involved no injuries to MoD staff nor any damage to MoD vehicles or equipment.

It said they were recorded as ‘near misses’ as part of an approach to "continuous safety improvement" in the workplace.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said: “All activities continue to be carried out safely and securely by appropriately trained employees and well-established contingency plans will mean the strike by GMB members will have no effect on our ongoing support to Ukraine."

The MoD say that through the recent 2023 Pay Award, DE&S has uplifted the annual pay range minimum for the employees in question by £3,000, representing an increase of 14.63% in base pay.

It says that the offer DE&S has left on the table is that the employees in question will have the opportunity to achieve a further uplift from April 2024, which would represent a 37% increase in base pay since 2022.