Neither Threats nor Bribes nor the Rain dampens Polish Workers Resolve to fight on.

Andy Fenwick Of Unite interviewed Pawel Stopa, the Polish workers’ spokesperson at Siemens new power station at Uskmouth.

Sacked Polish workers gathered yesterday at the gates at Siemens new power station at Uskmouth near Newport to meet with representative of the GMB union. The workers were sacked by management of Durmar Ltd, the lowest link in a chain of contractors and sub contractors. It is rumoured that the workers have been replaced with other workers by Isocore, an Austrian contractor that sub-contracted the work to Durmar, who employed workers to lag pipe work on this project. The workers complaint was  that the company was not paying the correct rate for the job and had not paid the workers money owed for overtime worked, which in total amounted to approximately £18,000 believed to be owed to each worker for work that they have done on this project.

What did Durmar management intend to do when, on September 11th, the 20 Polish workers involved confronted management about the missing money from their payslips? Were they going to pay up and claim that some administrative error was at fault? Not this management! They proceeded to put before the men forms, written in English not Polish, that were more than a little confusing. The forms, if they had been signed, would have meant that the men had waived any right to back pay. When the men refused to sign, Durmar bosses sacked them on the spot and, as the contractor had arranged accommodation, management then started to threaten to now evict the workers, leaving them homeless in a foreign land.

Since then at meetings, Siemens & Isocore have tried to bribe the workers with a £2,000 payoff to go back to Poland. But the men want to work and get the proper rate for the job.

It was only a year ago that the mass wave of strikes hit major construction sites all over Britain over the very issue of not undercutting national terms and conditions by foreign contractors and Siemens at Uskmouth was part of that dispute and the agreement to end it. Rather than deal with the contractor and force them to pay up, Siemens want to brush the whole issue under the carpet, hoping that the rest of the construction workers on site will not take action. But already murmurs of discontent are bubbling up to the surface with suggestions of an all out strike being proposed by some groups of workers on the site not only in support of the Polish workers but in defence of national terms and conditions.

This action disproves the position adopted last year by Derek Simpson & Tony Woodley of UNITE with their stance of "British Jobs for British workers."  Workers from any land instinctively know it is the defence of hard won terms and conditions that matters.