London tube line workers 'conned' by gangmaster

[John Ashworth]

London tube line workers 'conned' out of thousands by gangmaster

Construction boss for East London Line said to have made £300,000 by underpaying his men

* Jamie Elliott
* The Observer, Sunday 6 September 2009

Workers employed to build parts of London's new transport links which will be vital during the Olympics have, in effect, been conned out of thousands of pounds by a gangmaster.

Between April 2008 and March this year, workers on the tube's East London Line extension project were paid as little as a third of the amount Paul Singh was charging for their work, allowing him to amass a profit of more than £300,000. "Singh was getting £155 per man per day for his 15-strong team while paying them around the minimum wage [£5.73 per hour] which allowed him to make around £6,000 per week for himself," said Transport for London spokesman Guy Pitt.

Singh was contracted to provide the staff by Woulfe and Son, a firm sub-contracted by Balfour Beatty/Carillion, the consortium which won the £363m contract to build the first phase of the project. Woulfe and Son has worked on numerous public projects, including the Channel Tunnel rail link.

According to Transport for London, Pat Woulfe, the company's managing director, did not find out how little Singh was paying his employees until early this year. "Pat Woulfe's concerns about Singh came about at the end of January, when two workers he had employed directly brought to his attention discrepancies between what they were earning and the amount Singh was paying his men," said Pitt.

Woulfe and Son ended its relationship with Singh at the end of February, but the wages issue was only part of the reason the company got rid of him.

"Woulfe has told us that Singh had started to become 'unreliable and went haywire' and was increasingly absent from the site, leaving his workers unsupervised," said Pitt. "The wages issue was the straw that broke the camel's back."

Workers the Observer has spoken to on the East London Line site claim Singh's staff were paid as little as £50 per day, which, if true, would have taken their earnings below the national minimum wage. Transport for London says it does not know if the minimum wage rules were breached.

Woulfe and Son failed to alert either Transport for London or Balfour Beatty/Carillion about the gangmaster's activities, which only came to light after the Observer learnt about Singh's operation from other workers on the East London Line site last month.

Construction workers are not protected by the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, set up in 2005. The authority can only investigate gangmasters operating in the agriculture, forestry, horticulture, shellfish-gathering, food and drink processing and packaging sectors. Alan Ritchie, general secretary of the construction union Ucatt, said the licensing authority's remit needed to be widened and that Singh's activities were part of a wider problem in the construction industry.

"It is deeply disturbing that on a public project like the East London Line, which involves millions in taxpayers' money, workers can be employed for such a long time with no record of how much they were paid and whether they received the minimum wage," he said.

"What the Observer has uncovered is a model we see a lot – complex chains of sub-contractors, agencies and gangmasters involving major levels of exploitation. Until the Gangmasters Act is extended to the construction industry, similar cases will occur. By licensing gangmasters and employment agencies, only companies which meet minimum standards will be able to supply labour, and if they are then found to be abusing workers they can be rapidly stripped of their licences."

Workers on the East London Line site claimed the activities of gangmasters such as Singh depress wages paid to other workers.

Woulfe and Son has refused to discuss the issue with the Observer despite numerous attempts, and the paper was unable to contact Singh.