WESTINGHOUSE workers plan to demand a share of the $3.8 billion (£2.1 billion) profit that the Treasury will make on the sale of the nuclear power station developer to Toshiba.
Union representatives will argue at a meeting with British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) directors on Friday that workers should receive a bonus, given the unexpectedly high sale price that the Government achieved.
Toshiba was poised to announce to the Japanese Stock Exchange overnight that it will buy Westinghouse from the state-owned British company for $5 billion. The company, based largely in the United States but with about 1,300 employees in Britain, was bought by BNFL in 1998 for $1.2 billion.
An announcement on the sale is expected today, after the last round of bids was made over the weekend at meetings with Mike Parker, chief executive of the group, and Gordon Campbell, chairman. Toshiba is thought to have trumped General Electric to win the company by offering $500 million more than the American giant’s last bid.
Mike Graham, national secretary for Prospect, the technical union that has 6,000 members at BNFL, said that Westinghouse workers should share in the benefits of any sale through a share issue to employees.
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“At Friday’s meeting, unions will expect to hear how the company intends to reward the people who have turned Westinghouse around and made a success out of it, not just the consultants and its current owners,” he said.
Prospect has argued that Westinghouse and British Nuclear Group, the decommissioning arm of BNFL, should be subject to a public private partnership, so that the State can retain an interest.
Westinghouse was expected to net about $2 billion for the Treasury. However, the global resurgence in interest in building new nuclear power plants helped the Government to make a very strong return.
“Some of that return should come back to the workforce, not least to fund any pension deficit that there may be in the nuclear industry at this time,” Mr Graham said. “Pension provision has still to be sorted out in Westinghouse itself.”
The union also wanted an investigation into the culture and practice of any group that takes over Westinghouse.
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Insiders said that Toshiba was considered to be the company least likely to interfere with senior Westinghouse management.
BNFL declined to comment.