LONDON, Nov 1: More than 1,500 workers of Royal Dutch Shell went on strike on Tuesday at Europe’s biggest oil refinery in The Netherlands, in protest at group plans to alter their pension rights, union leaders said.

Workers at the Pernis refinery, in the Dutch port of Rotterdam, and the petrochemical facility in nearby Moerdijk joined the strike that had begun late on Monday, a spokesman for Dutch union CNV said.

The walk-out was the first faced by the Anglo-Dutch energy giant in The Netherlands since 1979.

Those on strike meanwhile accounted for 60 per cent of the facilities’ combined workforce of about 2,500.

The Pernis refinery normally produces 416,000 barrels of oil per day, while the Moerdijk facility produces about 900,000 tons of petrochemicals per year.

The (strikers’) plan is to bring down (the operations) completely, the union spokesman said, adding that the total shutdown could be achieved in around a week’s time.

Around 1,000 employees at a natural gas subsidiary owned jointly by Shell and US-based ExxonMobil, the Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij (NAM), would join the strike on Wednesday, he added.

Local unions CNV and FNV and Shell meanwhile had no immediate plans to return to the negotiating table, after last-ditch talks broke down on Monday, the spokesman said.

The strike was launched after Shell proposed raising the retirement age of employees to 65 from 60 from January next year and increasing the contribution employees made to the company’s pension scheme.

The strike had little effect on trading in crude oil futures on Tuesday, dealers said.—AFP