NORTH KILLINGHOLME, England British workers voted on Thursday to end a week-long unofficial strike over the use of foreign labour at a French-owned oil refinery in eastern England.
Workers at the Total-owned Lindsey plant told Reuters they would return to work on Monday after accepting a union-backed deal that would give British skilled workers around 100 jobs at the site.
"We've agreed to go back to work on Monday because we've reached our objective," said Tony Ryan, a local representative of Britain's biggest union Unite.
"We didn't want British labour to be excluded and now they are not going to be."
The dispute over the use of Portuguese and Italian contractors at the refinery instead of British labour at a time of surging unemployment had triggered sympathy strikes across Britain.
The strikes had not affected energy supplies because they involved workers involved in maintenance and construction.
Although they have not organised the strikes, unions hope most of those sympathy protests will cease but also warn other cases where foreign skilled workers have been drafted in to British sites could trigger further industrial action.
Unions argue that foreign workers can be employed for lower wages than British staff and are depriving qualified Britons of jobs.
The Lindsey dispute started last week when British contract workers in the welding and machine-engineering trades launched protests against the employment of about 200 Italian and Portuguese on a new construction plant.
The strike has embarrassed Prime Minister Gordon Brown who pledged "British jobs for British workers" in 2007, with many protesters holding placards bearing that same slogan.
Brown, currently urging nations around the world not to retreat into protectionism as the global economy weakens, is now under pressure to ensure British skilled workers are not excluded from applying for contracts on British soil.
"This fight hasn't stopped this is only the start of the battle to get equal rights for our workers," said Ryan.
(Reporting by Luke Baker, Editing by Matt Falloon)
Workers at the UK's Lindsey Oil Refinery have voted to return to work.

The week-long strike at the refinery began over the issuing by French owners Total S.A. of a contract to an Italian company, who brought in Italian and Portuguese workers. The unofficial strike had led to similar unofficial sympathy strikes across the country.

The deal to end the strike will see around 100 jobs being offered to British workers. Additionally, the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, who had repeatedly criticized the strikers, has agreed to review laws governing foreign workers. Unions have warned that, while this action was now over, the country could see further action at other sites with larger numbers of foreign workers. Phil Whitehurst of the GMB union said "It was an excellent decision. We have now got the chance to go back to work but the fight does not stop here". Derek Simpson of the Unite union pointed to Staythorpe Power Station in Nottinghamshire as a potential source of problems. The site has Spanish contractors, although Unite said that they had no evidence the foreign workers there were undercutting UK staff.
North Lincolnshire 
Gordon Brown's agreement to look into laws on the free transfer of labour within the European Union came during the weekly Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons. A review has been set up to look into the issue and he told the House, "When they have reached their conclusions we will look at what they have to say". 

''The Times'' points out that this may conflict with Business Secretary Lord Mandelson's statement on Sunday, where he said that "it is not European law that has caused this problem for us". German politicians have called for a European-wide review, something opposed by the British and Polish governments and the European Commission.