http://www.guardian .co.uk/politics/ 2008/jun/ 30/tradeunions. pay
Migrant builder took home £8.80 for a week
· Union wins back pay for Lithuanians on NHS site
· MP to raise regulation issue in Commons
* Matthew Taylor and Esther Addley
* The Guardian,
* Monday June 30, 2008

Eastern European migrants working on the construction of a £600m NHS hospital
have been taking home as little as £8.80 for a 39-hour week, the Guardian has
learned, in what has been described by union bosses as one of the worst
instances of employee abuse in the building sector since EU enlargement.

The group of around 12 men, most of whom are Lithuanian, are construction
workers on the government-backed PFI project in Nottinghamshire. Though
allegations of abuse of migrants' rights on construction sites are widespread
across the country the scale in this instance has shocked unions and
politicians.

Michael Clapham, MP for Barnsley West and Penistone, who is due to raise the
matter in parliament today, said: "This happened on a government project where
there are good rules and a strong union - who knows what is happening on the
hundreds of smaller sites around the UK?"

According to industry guidelines and an agreement between unions and the
building firm Skanska, which is overseeing the project, workers on the site
should have been earning more than £7 an hour. But after deductions for rent,
tool hire and utility bills, some of the Lithuanian employees were receiving so
little observers say it left them virtually destitute.

Payslips seen by the Guardian show that one man worked a 39-hour week and took
home just £8.80 after his entire monthly rent was deducted in one week, in
breach of the law. A second worker was paid £79.20 for a 63-hour week and a
third worked 70 hours a week for just £66. As they were registered as
self-employed they did not receive holiday or sick pay. One man had £228 taken
from his pay in one week for tools. The men each had a further £76.80 deducted
weekly as their payment to the "construction industry scheme", which technically
registers them as self-employed, meaning their employers have no requirement to
pay national insurance.

Employers are allowed to make deductions from their staff's pay for
accommodation, but the amount is limited by law to a maximum of £30.10 a week,
or £4.30 a day. According to Ucatt, the building union, this means that an
employee working 37 hours at £6 an hour should take home a minimum of £174.14 a
week unless they have agreed to any other deductions. The men refused to talk
about their experiences when approached by the Guardian. However, a colleague
said at least seven of them were sharing a three-bedroom flat and they cycled to
work to save money. "We are worried about how they are managing to survive," he
added.

Alan Ritchie, general secretary of Ucatt, said: "This case is the worst we have
seen. These workers were virtually destitute."

The men have been working on the Kings Mill hospital site in Mansfield. They are
not employed directly by Skanska, which has subcontracted another firm, which in
turn subcontracted a third, responsible for supplying the men. A number of other
subcontractors are operating on the site and have no complaints against them.

Last night Skanska, the main contractor on the site, said it had been made aware
of the allegations two weeks ago and took "such issues very seriously". It has
since held meetings with the subcontractors and the union. "On June 24 matters
were resolved with the parties involved. Skanska understands that all back pay
will be paid to the relevant workers on or around July 2." The Guardian
attempted to contact the subcontractor that had directly employed the men at an
address it had registered with Companies House but there was no response. Last
night Ucatt's regional secretary, Steve Murphy, said he was confident the men
would receive back pay for deductions and missing overtime in the next few days.
"We will be able to eventually get a fair resolution for these workers. What is
truly frightening is to think what happens on the many unorganised sites in our
country."

The men were building internal walls and some were working up to 70 hours a week
without receiving overtime. Clapham said: "Working that long on a building site
is hard work. How can we expect to improve safety standards in this industry
when employers carry on like this?"

Philip Hyland, partner at the employment law firm PJH Law, based in Stamford,
Lincolnshire, said that in his experience excessive deductions from migrant
workers' payslips were widespread, and cited an experiment in which his firm
invited local Poles to contact it. Of 80-100 people who got in touch over a
month, he said, only one was getting the correct pay.

Ucatt is campaigning to have the Gangmasters Licensing Act extended to cover the
construction industry, which would mean that employment agencies and
subcontractors have to pass minimum standards before they can supply labour.

A spokesman for the department for business said that the construction industry
was covered by the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate. "The reason we have
not extended the GLA into construction is because there has been no consensus to
do so and we have felt there are more effective ways to tackle abuses in the
sector."
Case studies

After a 39-hour week, one man took home £8.80 when his monthly rent of £155 was
deducted in one week. Another man worked a 70-hour week, earning £420, but was
not paid overtime and after having £228 deducted for repayment on tools was left
with £66. A third man worked a 40-hour week but was left with £13 after paying
£155 for a month's rent. As self-employed workers they received no holiday pay.

 

http://www.telegrap h.co.uk/news/ main.jhtml? xml=/news/ 2008/04/06/ nimm106.xml
Immigration has reduced jobs for Britons
Ben Leapman, Home Affairs Correspondent
Last Updated: 12:50am BST 06/04/2008

Mass immigration has been accompanied by a fall in the number of Britons with jobs, official figures show.

Since 2004, when citizens of eight central and eastern European countries were given the right to work in Britain, the number of UK-born people working here has fallen by 500,000, from 24.4 million to 23.9 million.

Over the period, the number of migrants in work, including people born abroad but now naturalised as British citizens, rose by 1.1 million - to 3.3 million.
They now make up one in eight of the workforce.

The figures, from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), provide the strongest evidence yet that Britons have lost their jobs to immigrants, says a leading expert on immigration.

Robert Rowthorn, a Cambridge University professor who uncovered the findings, said: "It seems hard to deny that immigration from the new EU member states has had a negative impact on the employment of UK natives."

The data emerged too late to be considered by the House of Lords economic affairs committee, which reported last week on the impact of immigration on the British economy. In their report, the peers found while immigration had an overall positive impact, the benefit to the average citizen was marginal. However, the report found no firm evidence that immigration had created unemployment.

The ONS figures, released by the Treasury in response to a parliamentary question, show that between 2001 and 2007 the number of UK-born British nationals in employment fell by 495,000. Most of the decline came after 2004.

The percentage of working-age, UK-born Britons in work fell from a peak of 75.7 in 2003, the year before European Union enlargement, to 75.2 in 2007. Part of the fall could be attributed to employers directly replacing British workers
with migrants, particularly in agriculture, factories and low-skilled service-sector jobs.

However, Prof Rowthorn said the most likely victims were British-born school-leavers who had never had a job, having failed to find the kind of casual work they might have walked into a few years ago.

The claim will fuel a political row over the prospects for a generation referred to as "Neets" (not in education, employment or training).

The professor said: "We are looking at the most vulnerable, least skilled and in some ways least motivated members of the local workforce. The problem that eastern European migrants pose is that they are good workers."

Other explanations for the decline in the number of UK-born workers include a rise in emigration to countries such as Australia and a growing trend for young adults to stay on in higher education instead of moving straight into the labour
market at 16 or 18.

Over the same period, according to the ONS, the number of foreign-born naturalised Britons with jobs rose by 248,000; the number of eastern Europeans with jobs rose by 381,000; and the number of other foreign nationals with jobs rose by 480,000. The net result was a rise in employment of just over 600,000.

Ministers have pointed to rising total employment, the low jobless rate and the high level of vacancies as evidence that immigrants have moved into new jobs, rather than taking existing jobs.

Nigel Meager, director of the Institute for Employment Studies, said key questions remained unanswered. He said: "There is evidence that significant numbers of employers, for certain kinds of jobs, are preferring migrant labour - either because they can't find indigenous labour who will take those jobs at
those wages, or because they have got a view about the attitude and work ethics of migrant workers. It is clear that there has been an increase in the employment of non-British nationals. The question is whether that's displacement
or extra employment in the labour market. We need much better data."

Ministers have relied on a study published in 2006 by the Department for Work and Pensions, which found "no discernible statistical evidence which supports
the view that the inflow of [EU central and eastern European] migrants is contributing to a rise in claimant unemployment in the UK". However, the Lords committee heard claims by independent analysts that the DWP study was flawed.

Meanwhile, the former cabinet minister Clare Short commented that the Government had made a "very big mistake" in allowing large-scale immigration from eastern
Europe. Speaking on BBC1's Question Time, she said: "It [immigration] does squeeze down wages at the lower end of the labour market and it pushes young people out of the labour market."

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