Exploitation of Workers

national | worker & community struggles and protests | news report Tuesday July 12, 2005 22:15 by Martin

Some information about companies exploiting migrant workers in Ireland

As well as Format (Dublin Port Tunnel) and Gama, there are a number of other companies known or suspected to be exploiting migrant workers. Cases heard in the Labour Court are not open to the public but here are a few scraps of information that have been made available to me. In many cases the exploitation is being carried on by sub-contractors / agencies in the workers’ home country.

ZRE (Zaklad Remontowy Energetyki), with an address in Katowice, Poland, told its employees that standard working time in Ireland was 250 hours a month. ZRE employed people on the Shannonbridge (Offaly) Electric Power Station and in Lough Ree Power in Lannesborough in late 2003 and early 2004. Welders were paid €1,400 for a 250 hour month (€5.60 per hour).
The Organisation of Working Time Act (1997) sets a maximum average working week of 48 hours, calculated over four months. There are exceptions, for example, in industrial activity where work cannot, for technical reasons, be interrupted.

Aluglass (with an address in Deansgrange, Dublin)
Among the terms of their contracts with foreign workers are the following (late 2004):

Net basic monthly pay: 1,000 euros plus a 295 euro bonus.
Workers forfeit 1/10 of their monthly pay for every day they are absent from work.
Working hours:
Weekdays: 7.30 am - 5.30 pm
Weekends: 7.30 am – 2.00 pm
Annual holidays: 10 days

Tesco is being taken taken to court by SIPTU for sacking a Polish employee without giving justification. This, and complaints that Polish workers were not being paid the bonuses available to Irish workers doing the same work, have been reported in the (mainstream) Polish press.

Atlanco, which employed Portuguese workers in Northern Ireland, has also been in the news for the wrong reasons, though not of late. UTV’s Insight team ("From Portugal to Portadown") investigated them in 2002 and the Institute for Conflict Research's "Migrant Workers in Northern Ireland" reported that, among other things, Atlanco pays less than the minimum rate and deducts rent directly from wages, meaning the more hours worked the more rent is paid. See http://www.research.ofmdfmni.gov.uk/migrantworkers.pdf

P.S.
Some of you may have seen an item on the six o’clock news on RTE 1 on Monday July 11th about the exploitation of Latvian workers on a mushroom farm whose name the journalists skilfully managed to avoid mentioning, though they did film one of the Latvian employees. Anybody know the name of the farmer?