On Friday the 5th of January more than a hundred construction workers protested outside the Paradise Street site, the biggest construction project in Liverpool. The workers, mainly Amicus electricians also included other trades and TGWU and GMB members, were calling for the enforcement of national agreements, for instance the JIB and NAECI.

A key demand of the protesters is to be directly employed by the construction companies carrying out the work and not employed via an agency. Agencies are used to undermine trade union organisation, a worker who becomes a shop steward can simply be sent back to the agency, and as a way of eroding pay rates by the use of enforced bogus selfemployment. An unemployed construction worker attempting to gain employment is in a poor bargaining position when the only offer of work is as a selfemployed tradesman hired via an agency.

Construction workers terms and conditions are also being undermined by the use of migrant workers who are being cynically exploited by construction companies. The bosses will pay vastly inferior wages when they think they can get away with it. We demand the going rate for all workers. It is a disgrace that the only legally enforceable rate of pay in the UK is the minimum wage. We demand that the nationally agreed rates are the minimum construction workers should expect.

The protest was part of a wider ongoing campaign seeking to organise construction workers, a notoriously difficult area for trade unions.