Oil workers are to be balloted over the coming weeks for an all-out official strike across the North Sea.
The aim of the action will be to enforce union recognition and basic health and safety standards.
The decision by the TUC and the seven national unions with members in the offshore industry to back this course of action is a result of the sustained and effective campaign wage by the rank and file based Offshore Industry Liaison Committee.
However, big problems remain. Most of the best militants in the industry will not get a vote because they have been victimised.
Humberside OILC chair Eric McTaggart explained: "The ballot is rigged. What kind of democracy is it when the employers say, 'you're sacked, you don't work for us any more, you're not in the industry any more - you can't vote'?
"If that wasn't bad enough, it's criminal that the official trade union leadership are going along with it.
"We have 2,000 men on the beach, sacked. The ballot will exclude them. The oil companies don't want them back because they are the backbone of our struggle.
"We've been told that none of those victimised will receive any benefit for six months. But we are standing firm. We are going to continue the struggle."
The official union leaderships, for all their promises and rhetoric about supporting the offshore workers, are in danger of sabotaging the dispute.
They must reverse their current course of action, and ballot every oil worker, including all those sacked - not just the ones who have been forced to sign loyalty oaths and no-strike agreements to get back to work.
If the oil companies and contractors then try to get the ballot declared illegal, it will only further expose the undemocratic nature of the anti-union laws. To accept the bosses' rules from the off is simply to court defeat.
And defeat is the last thing that offshore workers can contemplate. Victory will be a victory not just for offshore workers but for every one of us. As Eric McTaggart puts it:
"The offshore workers united would be the most powerful group of workers in Britain. If we win, it will give everyone confidence. We could be as powerful as the miners and printers once were."
