UK workers vote to end strike

Hurriyet Daily News with wires

Under the deal outlined Wednesday by officials from Unite, the country’s biggest union, a total of 102 new jobs at the Lindsey refinery will be offered to local workers for nine weeks, Bloomberg reported.

About 600 contractors walked out at Lindsey in northeast England last week after Italy’s IREM brought in its own workers to carry out a construction project. The protest sparked a wave of industrial action across Britain as concerns mount over the recession, which has sent the number of people out of work to an 11-year high.

Meanwhile, the European Commission said Wednesday that restricting the movement of workers from one EU country to another was not a solution.

"Free movement is a fundamental value of the European Union," Agence France-Presse quoted EU Social Affairs Commissioner Vladimir Spidla as saying. "Experience has shown us that it is not by creating barriers now and trying to restrict the internal market that we will protect ourselves from the crisis. Erecting barriers will not create jobs."