Construction Industry Jungle: Freedom to Mangle Workers [1987]
[This article by Desmond Greaves was carried in the January 1987 issue of the “Irish Democrat”. Throughout its 85 years’ existence from 1938 to 2023 the Connolly Association was concerned with welfare issues affecting the Irish community in Britain, many of whose male members worked in the building industry. This article and the proposed conference that it refers to is just one example illustrating this concern.]
Once more thousands of Irish people are emigrating every year. The “Irish Democrat” was the only paper to forecast this unpleasant development.
It is all due to Ireland’s membership of the Common Market, which has caused the highest unemployment in history, and which will be made worse by the notorious “Single European Act” [This introduced the European single market, with all sorts of common standards across the then European Community being implemented by supranational voting on the European Council of Ministers].
But will they get work if they emigrate to Britain? For the most part the emigrants of the nineteen eighties are much younger than those of the fifties. And that arouses fears as to their possible fate.
There may be room for the girls in some of the so-called “service” industries, though they will no longer just walk into work on good terms and conditions.
For the boys the greatest danger is going to be the state of the building industry, once the traditional recourse of the migrant countryman.
Information being disseminated by Finsbury Park UCATT [Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians] is that since the Tories came into power in 1979 the construction industry has shrunk and shrunk. In 1981, to take an example, it employed 1,036,000 workers. In 1982 this went down to 990,000.
But though the employment went down the number of accidents went up. In 1981 134 building workers lost their lives in accidents. In 1982 it was 148. This leaves aside the many more who suffered injuries that were not bad enough to kill them.
In 1983 Victor Jordan, head of the Health and Safety Executive Construction section declared:
“Since the beginning of 1981 as many men have been killed in the construction industry as were lost in the Falklands.”
And he went on:
“I blame the ‘lump’. I am getting reports from my inspectors about the way 714 certificate holders (i.e. sub-contractors) make lump sum deals with contractors.”
The building worker of today has a hard life. There are long periods of the dole and hunting for work, the rapid alternation of “hiring and firing”, and no pay for holidays or inclement weather. He may have to live away from home and pay high rent for rough lodgings. There are reports of sub-contractors threatening violence to deprive workers of wages and the 30% self-employed tax deduction. Cases have been reported both in “Construction News” and “City Limits”.
Two twenty-year-old Irish carpenters were crushed to death when a job in Cromwell Road collapsed on them in October 1984. Building workers picketed the coroner’s court, and a bricklayer member of Finsbury Park UCATT gave evidence, saying that he had drawn attention to a badly damaged and eroded load-bearing pier.
Government policies all tend to make things worse. The asbestos scare had led to inspectors being withdrawn from building sites. Requests by building workers that inspectors should visit their sites are frequently turned down.
And in the sacred name of “freedom” the Government proposes to introduce “Self-regulation” into the industry. That is to say that firms are to check on their own safety standards.
An experiment was tried with one very big company. It was ultimately found not to work and an inspector making a snap visit found a trench 8-feet deep being dug by hand by a Mr Patrick Ryan. It was unshored. But he had great difficulty finding out who it was that had employed Mr Ryan. In other words the main contractor could be all for safety and still the sub-contractors would not bother about it.
But though one scheme failed the Government is pressing on with its vicious and criminal policy. It has published a Green Paper called “Lifting the burden”. What burden? That of health and safety law from the backs of small business. These are being given a license, as Charles Dickens put it a century ago, to “mangle their operatives”. It has been called the “Cowboys’ Charter” and will create chaos on sites where non-exempt firms are working alongside exempt ones. Safety would go by the board and there would be no legal remedy.
So what are we to think of the prospects of young people coming over from Ireland into this savage jungle, young people who as a result of unemployment at home have never had the experience to know to join a trade union, even if there is one on the job they go to?
This situation was discussed at a recent meeting of the Executive Council of the Connolly Association and contact was made with UCATT organiser Tom Mernagh, who confirmed the situation and explained that he had had one of his own members recently killed
The Association is therefore calling a conference in London on Saturday, 21st March 1987. Representatives of the building unions will be invited to speak, and contact will be made with the Trade Union movement in Ireland, with a view to ensuring that they warn prospective emigrants of the dangers confronting them and the need in their own interests to join their appropriate trade unions.
It is also intended to give publicity to the Union’s demands that are designed to meet this situation. These include locally elected union safety representatives with access to all sites, paid for by a levy on building contractors. This requires a register of employers and those breaking safety rule to be banned from the industry. There is also needed a register of employees, upholding their rights on such matter as site safety, no hire and fire, wet-time pay, sick pay, holiday pay, no racial discrimination and trade union recognition.
The union is demanding that main contractors be liable for all losses of employees, and that there should be heavier fines and jail for those whose negligence leads to serious injury or death of any worker.
Two other requirements are the expansion of local authority direct labour departments, for these uphold the best safety standards in the construction industry. The number of Health and Safety Inspectors should be doubled.
And as well as that the entire Labour movement should join in serious efforts to increase trade union membership in the construction industry and to back up the courageous and dedicated trade unionists who are keeping the flag flying, nowhere better than in London.