Hundreds of employees protested at an oil refinery in Lincolnshire, eastern England, where the dispute started after a construction contract was awarded to an Italian sub-contractor which hired workers from Italy and Portugal.

The unofficial strike at the Lindsey plant has sparked copycat protests from thousands of workers at power stations, including the Sellafield nuclear plant, and at construction sites across Britain.

The talks were being mediated by the conciliation service Acas and involved unions, the refinery's owner, French oil giant Total, and the Italian company at the centre of the row.

Business Secretary Peter Mandelson, the former European Union (EU) trade commissioner, said he did not believe Total had broken any British laws and he was determined to see "robust enforcement" of the country's employment rights.

He added: "We should keep our sights set firmly not on the politics of xenophobia but on the economics of this recession."

Total said in a statement it welcomed the talks and stated "it has never been, and never will be, the policy of Total to discriminate against British companies or British workers."

But British unions maintain that their members were denied the chance to work on the Lindsey contract.

About 400 workers braved the bitter cold to attend a mass meeting outside the refinery on Tuesday, where union leaders accused the government of trying to portray the dispute as racism.

Keith Gibson, of the GMB union, said: "They are trying to bring it round to the racist issue. I think we've got to say quite clearly this morning, this issue is a class issue.

"This issue is based around the defence of the construction industry national agreement which, we believe, with their use of foreign labour or otherwise, is a direct attack on a national agreement."

Unions said about 400 contractors at Scottish Power's Longannet power station in Fife, eastern Scotland, and about 130 at a facility in East Lothian had agreed to continue their unofficial strike action until Friday.

But 700 contractors at the Grangemouth oil refinery in central Scotland returned to work after walking out Monday in support of the Lindsey strike.

John Monks, general secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation, said the dispute was typical of problems across the 27-nation European Union in cases where workers were employed outside their home country.

The issue arose because British law requires foreign workers to be employed only in line with minimum legal conditions, rather than on the same pay and conditions as British workers in the same jobs, Monks said.

"That's not good enough for us," he told BBC radio. "The combination of the British law and European law is inadequate to deal with the kind of situation we have got at the moment.

"The government needs to look at the way it applies the European law."

Monks said that provided Total was treating the foreign contract workers "according to the conditions in Britain that apply, there is nothing in principle wrong with that."

But he added: "It is very important at the same time that companies like Total are aware of the fact that if there are some British workers who have just been made unemployed because their contractor lost the job, there are going to be a lot of sensitivities."

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