Grangemouth Union Official Cleared of Criminal Charges

Stevie Deans, the former convenor for the trade union Unite at the Ineos petrochemicals site in Grangemouth, Scotland, who was at the center of the cliff-hanging industrial dispute at the UK site last autumn, has been cleared by police of any wrongdoing.

The union official had been accused by Grangemouth local management of rigging votes for the Labor party in the nearby town of Falkirk, and the chemical group leveraged the situation to its advantage in pressing employees to make concessions on pay and pension benefits.

Police, who had searched Deans' email, said they found "no evidence of any criminality." He has since resigned from Ineos and gone to work temporarily for the union.

Ineos meanwhile has rewarded Media Zoo UK, the public relations company that steered it through the Grangemouth dispute. Tom Crotty, external affairs director at the Switzerland-based company said Ineos is expanding the PR agency's brief to include communicating with trade organizations and governments in its key markets of the U.S. and Germany,

"Our goal is to communicate the importance of Ineos' British manufacturing and energy production to the wider world," said Media Zoo senior account director Andrew McLachlan.