Anger as foreigners win power station jobs
HUNDREDS of angry British workers picketed the site of a new power station yesterday to highlight the “national scandal” of how foreign construction teams are being favoured.
Leaders from the Unite union say Poles, Spaniards and Portuguese are all being given jobs building the £66million plant which was expected to create around 850 temporary positions during its construction phase.
But Unite says 18 Hungarian workers are already employed at Staythorpe and 250 Poles and 250 Spanish and Portuguese are set to follow.
The union has branded the alleged deal a “national scandal” and a betrayal of Gordon Brown’s “British jobs for British workers” mantra.
The giant gas-fired plant at Staythorpe, near Newark, Nottinghamshire, is to be run by RWE npower.
It’s a disgrace that local workers who have years of experience are being locked out of the job.
Newark MP Mr Patrick Mercer said: “This is a local manifestation of a national issue. I am anxious to speak to the Prime Minister.”
Unite’s joint leader Derek Simpson said: “It’s a disgrace that local workers who have years of experience are being locked out of the job.
“We are seeing thousands of jobs being lost daily, yet at Staythorpe there is skilled, well-paid work available.
It is a national scandal. UK workers must be given a fair chance to get a cut of the action. They are not asking for special favours. They are demanding fair play.”
Hundreds of construction workers from around the country arrived by bus at the isolated rural site to demonstrate over the alleged carve-up.
Tom Hardacre, Unite’s national officer for construction, said he hoped the protests – to last all week – would spark Government intervention.
Stephen Pride, an unemployed rigger who lives near the site, said local workers were “gutted” by the lack of opportunities they were being given.
David Smeeton, 54, who lives in Brant Broughton, just 12 miles away, said his hopes of getting work as a pipe-fitter had been ruined.
He said: “This is the one sector of the economy that’s booming. There will be 100,000 jobs created in green energy over the next 20 years.
“But almost all them will go to foreign workers, because companies like Alstom can get away with paying them less than lads from the UK.
“Exactly how they manage to get away with it when they have to put these workers up in hotels and bus them in every day is a mystery. It’s a real kick in the teeth that there’s a power station going up virtually on my doorstep and I can’t get a job there. It’s a disgrace.”
Another would-be worker, out of a job since August after his contract on another station ended, said: “I’ve been waiting seven years for this project to begin. I could have walked to work, but instead they’re going to fly in workers from Poland or Spain.
“There have been three deaths in the industry recently, all involving foreigners, because for them it’s about getting the job done quickly and cheaply.” A Department for Business and Enterprise spokesman said: “The EU enables companies from one member state to bid for contracts in another and bring their own workforce on a temporary basis.”
An Alstom spokesman insisted: “Any claim that there will be no UK workers on the mechanical engineering phase is simply inaccurate and false. Our priority is to build and deliver a safe, effective station by engaging companies and personnel with appropriate skills and expertise.
“In meeting the obligations towards our customer and to achieve specific requirements, it may be some skills are engaged from outside the UK.”
