Welsh power plant project sparks immigrant pay row
15 Oct 2010
London – The GMB trade union is seeking to recover over £10,000 each for 16 Polish migrant workers, which it claims were underpaid by their employer Darmar on the engineering construction site at Uskmouth, South Wales.
The union has likened the case to similar issues at Lindsay oil refinery site, Staythorpe power station site and Isle of Grain power station site.
Severn Power awarded the main contact to Siemens to build the Uskmouth CCGT (Combined Cycle Gas Turbine) Power Station and work started on the site in early 2009. The site is covered by the engineering construction national agreement.
The thermal insulation subcontractor is Darmar who have been on Uskmouth site for about eleven months. Darmar, based in Harrow Middlesex, employ about 40 laggers on the site all of whom are migrants workers sourced through an agency called Isochore.
According to the GMB, its officers have seen the pay slips given to these union members, the payment details sent to the auditors (see also below) for these employees and details of the monies paid into the bank accounts of these members for the past seven months.
“None of these three sets of paperwork tally. The paperwork is now being examined by site auditor Baker Mallett who is the independent auditor employed by Siemens under the terms of the national agreement for engineering construction,” said the GMB.
Jeff Beck GMB Regional organiser covering the site said “GMB believe these migrant workers could be owed up to £14,000 each when the auditors goes through the trail of dubious book keeping of Darmar the thermal insulation contractor who employs these workers. The auditor is expected to be able to put a precise figure on the level of exploitation.”
GMB has submitted documentation to the auditors which the union believes shows that:
The Polish workers were not paid correct overtime payments which amounted to 19 hours pay per week.
They were deducted one days lodging allowance every week.
They have not had any periodic leave payments for seven months
They have had no periodic leave travel allowance (radius payments travel time and rail fares) for seven Months.
They have not been paid the correct Incentive Bonus Arrangement payments for seven months
The five points above are to a value of approx £1,200 per month.
They get paid one month in arrears. Payment for work in February is paid in March. The payment that has gone into their bank account does not tally with the overall amount they show as take home pay on their slips. Just taking March 2010 payment for example the bank account statement for one Polish worker shows 7040 PLN (the exchange on that date was 1PLN = 0.2329) which equates to £1,639 went into his bank account on 17th of March but his February slips shows he earned of £2,800. This is a £1,161 deficit.
