Teesside workers to protest over 'discriminating' recruitment
Members of the workers’ unions GMB and Unite are to join a protest in Teesside on Saturday (18 April) over waste management company SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT’s (formerly SITA UK) alleged ‘discrimination’ against local workers.
According to the committee, SITA SEMBCORP UK – the developing consortium of Sembcorp Utilities UK and I-Environment, led by SUEZ ENVIRONNEMENT – has given local workers ‘no chance’ of getting up to three-quarters of the jobs created by the construction of Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority’s controversial new energy-from-waste facility in Wilton, Teesside.
The £250 million purpose-built facility, Wilton 11, will incinerate over 430,000 tonnes of residual household waste each year from Merseyside and Halton once operational in 2016. It is estimated that the plant will be able to generate enough electricity for the equivalent of 63,000 homes – and, subject to local demand, be able to provide heat to nearby businesses, with the capacity to deliver 190 tonnes of steam per hour via a district heating system.
Around 400 workers are expected to be employed at the site during the facility’s construction (already underway), however, SITA SEMBCORP UK has confirmed that only 30 per cent of the 250 workers currently employed on construction are UK nationals from the area. GMB say that the majority of the construction jobs are going to ‘cheap European labour’.
GMB also claims that workers are being paid £4 per hour below the rates agreed in the National Agreement for the Engineering Construction Industry (NAECI) and the Construction Industry Joint Council (CIJC) Working Rule Agreement.
As such, GMB and Unite union members will march throughout Redcar on Teesside in protest, before congregating for a mass meeting on the topic at Redcar clocktower.
‘Don’t blame the exploited, damn those who exploit’
Explaining the decision to protest, GMB Regional Officer Michael Blench said: “This protest is not against European labour working in this country, but unscrupulous employers who insist on undercutting existing terms and conditions.”
Adding that development projects usually “bring great benefit to the surrounding communities while under construction because of the local spending back in to community and the jobs it would normally create”, he noted that this facility was different as it was largely relying on foreign workers.
Blench continued: “Don’t blame the exploited; damn those who exploit…Let’s reach out to those migrant workers not attack them, but organise and protect them.”
Unite Regional Officer Steve Cason added: “The public meeting is to inform people of developments at the plant… which has been dogged by the lack of transparency as to their employment and recruitment processes.”
Cason added that the union has held talks with the Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority about its concerns relating to “access to the workforce, rates of pay, bonus and overtime rates, holiday pay, and welfare facilities for all workers”.
He added: “We call on the SITA and Sembcorp management to genuinely engage with us in meaningful and constructive talks, and adhere to the tried-and-tested national agreements.”
‘No evidence to support claims’ of exploitation
Responding to the allegations, a spokesperson for SITA Sembcorp UK said: “We continue to refute all of these allegations and there’s no evidence to support any of these claims.
“Since construction began, a significant proportion of workers on site have been from the local area and we have made significant efforts to try and promote job opportunities to local workers. This included the organisation of a jobs fair at Redcar and Cleveland College on Thursday 19 February, to which 774 people attended.
“However, it is still necessary for a proportion of workers on site to be from wider European Union member states and it would be difficult to deliver a project of this nature without them.
“Energy-from-waste facilities require a great deal of specialist equipment which has had to be sourced from within the wider European Union. These elements are of a bespoke and sophisticated nature, meaning that some of our suppliers choose to use their own specialist and experienced workforce when they are fitted.”
He added that all of the workers on site, “irrespective of their nationality”, have rates of pay equivalent or higher to each of the unions’ relevant national agreements. “All workers on site, regardless of their nationality, are employed because of their individual skills and abilities”, he said. “They have a legal entitlement to work in the UK and contribute to the local economy while they are here. Furthermore there is no substance to allegations that they are employed on site as a means of sourcing cheap labour.”
SITA Sembcorp UK has also reportedly granted the unions access to the site so that they may “satisfy themselves of these facts”.
Find out more about the Wilton 11 project.
