Unite to ballot 20,000 construction workers over national strike

Britain's biggest union Unite is preparing to ballot up to 20,000 of its engineering and construction members over official strike action.

This followed a failure by union and employers to reach a deal to renew the National Agreement for the Engineering Construction Industry (NAECI), covering workers building and maintaining Britain's power stations and petrochemical sites, which has operated since 1981.

In an official statement, Unite said that construction employers, represented by the Engineering Construction Industry Association, had not met its demands.

The decision was taken to support a national ballot for industrial action at a meeting of national shop stewards in Manchester today (Friday).

The Unite statement said: "The agreement has seen an era of continuous improvement in safety, it is one of the safest sectors in British construction. Stability and guaranteed terms of employment with a directly employed workforce are supposed to be guiding principles, but employers have ridden roughshod over the agreement undercutting UK workers and exploiting non UK Labour.

"Union demands for transparency, stability and protection for UK and non UK Labour alike have been rejected by the employers."

Unite's national officer, Tom Hardacre, added: "Construction employers have rejected reasonable and just demands which would have delivered long term stability and fairness in an industry that has been plagued by instability and numerous injustices. 

"We now have no other choice but to ballot our members for official industrial action. A 'yes' vote will disrupt many of the UK's major construction projects and petrochemical sites.

"The unions have set out to introduce a Posted Workers Directive for the construction industry on the basis one has not been implemented properly in the UK. Instead employers are attempting to dilute a national agreement and turn it into a code of practice. With so much bad practice in the industry this approach from the employers beggars belief."

Union demands include a call for an equalisation of benefits for non UK and UK workers, a comprehensive auditing procedure to ensure employers keep to the national agreement. The unions are also calling for all workers on construction projects to have the correct competencies for doing the job.