by René Lavanchy
UNIONS have this week raised further concerns that British workers on major construction sites are being undercut, even as a Government-commissioned report into the Lindsey Oil Refinery dispute found that no rules were broken.
Speaking to Tribune, construction officials from Unite and the GMB – the two unions represented on the joint negotiating council for the engineering construction industry – said they were still worried that foreign workers brought in by contractors were being paid less to work longer. The GMB is investigating claims of Polish workers at one site being paid as much as £6 an hour less than the rate agreed by the joint council.
The warnings come as the Government announced a review into the sector’s competitiveness in the light of last month’s wildcat strikes.
In a report this week, conciliation service ACAS found that Total’s subcontractor at Lindsey was in compliance with European employment law when it brought in an exclusively foreign workforce. They also found that the workers’ pay and conditions were in line with the national agreement.
But Tom Hardacre, Unite’s national officer for construction, said: “That’s the opinion of ACAS… but we have had incidents of non-UK companies not paying in accordance with the national agreement.”
Brian Skipper, a GMB organiser at the Isle of Grain power station in Kent which has seen an ongoing dispute over use of foreign labour, said he had received evidence taken from Polish labourers that they were being paid £10 an hour, instead of the nationally agreed rate of £16. A Polish-language payslip was currently being deciphered. “Their own workers don’t understand their own payslips,” he said.
- The 850 workers sacked from BMW’s Mini plant at Cowley this week have had a jobs fair held in their honour. The workers, all temporary and agency-employed, were only given an hour’s notice when they turned up for work on Monday, a move Unite joint general secretary Tony Woodley called “scandalous”.
