On 18 January an independent audit confirmed what protesting workers and unions have been arguing all along – that the subcontracted multinationals Somi have been employing migrant workers below nationally agreed rates in order to drive down pay and conditions. Employers at the Staythorpe site in North Nottinghamshire agreed to the audit under threat of further strikes last autumn. There have also been widespread reports that migrant workers are being employed at lower skilled grades – and therefore lower pay – than British workers for the same work.
The audit has demanded that migrant workers who have been underpaid – in some cases by 1,300 Euros a month – have their wages increased to the same level as British workers, and be paid the full back-pay they are owed at the new level.
On 3 February the GMB union called a protest to drive the point home outside the offices of Lord Mandelson, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, and Alstom, who are in charge of the Staythorpe site. In the weeks before the protest the Daily Star continued their attempts to present the workers’ demands in the most chauvinist light possible, and turned up on the day to hand out placards reading ‘British Jobs for British Workers’. This slogan was raised in the early stages of the strikes last year in reference to Gordon Brown’s promises, but has since been consciously rejected by the unions and many workers, who understand that the real enemy are not migrant workers, but the multinationals who are using undercutting to divide workers and drive down pay and conditions.
Alongside the Daily Star, the most reactionary note on the protest was set by Labour MP John Mann, who declared his support for the ‘British Jobs for British Workers’ slogan and said that he would be tabling a bill in parliament to try and stop the employment of ‘foreign’ workers in the construction industry.
Multinationals will be able to continue their practice of undercutting as long as the workers of poor and oppressed countries are only paid a fraction of the wages available in Britain. The Staythorpe audit is a victory for all workers in the industry, whatever their nationality, as it strikes a blow against undercutting, but there are clearly more battles ahead. It is the responsibility of all socialists and anti-imperialists to support the engineering construction workers, both in their struggles against the multinationals, and in resisting the attempts of Labour MPs and the right wing press to divert their attention away from the real enemy and onto workers from other countries.
Thomas Vincent
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