Examination of Witnesses (Questions 200-207)
UNITE-THE
UNION
27 NOVEMBER 2007
Q200 Chairman: Poland has quite a
proud history of trade unionism, so I am surprised you cannot
get a Pole to join.
Mr Blackman: Many of them do actually,
but, if they come over and they are working for an agency or a
gangmaster, it is much more difficult than if they are working
for a sub-contractor.
Q201 Chairman: Presumably if we asked
you about gangmasters, and we asked UCATT about gangmasters, you
would agree that extending the Gangmaster Licensing Regulations
to them would be helpful?
Mr Blackman: Very much so.
Mr Hardacre: If I can just come
back to the question, we have had experiences of exploitation
of migrant workers within the engineering construction industry
and, because the client has agreed to use the national agreement
on that particular project, we have been able to sort those problems
out for those migrant workers who have been extremely appreciative
and there has been a development of a relationship between the
migrant workers and the domicile workers which has been really
good.
Q202 Mr Weir: From that, is it the
case that the ultimate employer on the site either does not know
or perhaps does not want to know how the migrant workers are being
treated by sub-contractors or agency employers or is it that they
know perfectly well what is going on and are just turning a blind
eye to it?
Mr Blackman: Main contractors
are in charge usually of who is coming on to sites, so they should
know who is there and who they are working for. I think probably
they choose to turn a blind eye in many cases. They are managing
agents, they are not builders. They do not have a workforce, they
have a supply chain that has a workforce and perhaps at the end
of the day, when you have abdicated your responsibilities as an
employer, you want to abdicate all the responsibilities that would
have previously gone with that and, therefore, it gets diluted
as you go down.
Q203 Chairman: I do not need an answer
to this unless you disagree with it, but one of the big contractors
we spoke to said that actually migrant labour is a mixed blessing
for the construction sector because it actually enabled them to
carry on old-fashioned working practices and productivity was
not increasing as fast as it might because they could rely on
people doing the old things the old-fashioned way, so the sector
had not moved with the times which it might have done in the UK.
Do you have any views on that?
Mr Blackman: I think certainly
the initial wave of skilled workers from Eastern Europe, and Poland
in particular because I think that 60% of them come from Poland,
they still are in a training culture that we had 30 years ago
where people are serving five-, six- and seven-year apprenticeships,
so obviously they are very, very skilled in terms of our skills
and there is a lot to learn from those people. I do not really
see that it is very much to do with production. I think that the
reality is that, if a job is well organised, well managed and
well supervised, that is what will make a difference.
Q204 Chairman: It made contractors
lazy, I think was the point, that they were not looking to manage
things as well as they might have done because they could rely
on cheap and large volumes of labour.
Mr Blackman: I think that is probably
true.
Q205 Chairman: A last, very important
area is health and safety performance. It does not seem to be
what it used to be, it seems to be getting worse, so what should
be done about it?
Mr Blackman: I think the difficulty
is that you are seeing a situation where, perhaps if you went
back 15 years, the majority of people that were killed on site,
the fatalities, because the statistics outside fatalities are
pretty meaningless, only 5% of serious accidents or reportable
accidents amongst the self-employed in construction are actually
reported, so the statistics are not of much use.
Q206 Chairman: The record may not
actually be getting worse, it may just be a statistical --
Mr Blackman: That is right. Well,
they would not occur. Because the majority of migrant labourers
are self-employed, it would not show, but I think in terms of
fatalities, what you are seeing is the serious accidents move
from the big, main contractor sites where all hazards once existed
and that probably accounted for 70% of the people killed in the
industry, that 70% now has moved across to repair, refurbishment,
small jobs and the housing sector where the numbers of people
killed last year have doubled, and those are the sectors of the
industry that are most casualised, there is more self-employment
and less regulation. If you speak to the Inland Revenue or the
HSE, they will tell you that that is the most difficult part of
the industry to engage with, and that is the real difficulty,
but they can learn because they can see what the main contractor
did that brought down the statistics within the industry and they
can use some of those good practices and initiatives that the
industry use from the Safety Summit in 2001.
Q207 Mr Hoyle: In your evidence,
you quite rightly point out that there has been a reduction of
388 HSE inspectors and that does not do any good for health and
safety at all. Just as one quick, final question, obviously UCATT
quite rightly and yourselves have made great play of Terminal
5, but is there anything you would like to add on the Terminal
5 contract that has not come out?
Mr Hardacre: I think that it was
fairly well addressed in terms of the benefits of the agreement
on Terminal 5 by the previous speaker, Alan Ritchie, but it really
highlights and kind of shows the benefit of a client who is prepared
to accept the national agreements and make sure that those national
agreements are strictly adhered to, and I believe that that was
a success. There is a report that was done by Baker Mallett, the
auditors, which I think kind of sets out what I am saying admirably,
that that agreement really contributed to the success of that
particular project, and we are hoping, by the way, that a similar
arrangement can be put in place on the Olympics project. I just
had to get that one in!
Mr Blackman: I think the difference
at Terminal 5 is that from the very beginning, two years before
the project started, the client decided, and it was the client,
to make the trade unions part of the project, so we have been
involved at every stage and that is the reason that we have the
experience that we have had at T5.
Chairman: Well, gentlemen, thank you
very much. You have given a very good account of yourselves again
and we are very grateful. If you think there are things which
you wish you had said, please do not hesitate to drop us a supplementary
memorandum or if you think there is something you want to correct,
which I am sure there will not be. We are extremely grateful for
your co-operation and your evidence today. Thank you very much
indeed.
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