Workers to fight vindictive sackings by GAMA management

by Anti-GAMA Mon Apr 25, 2005 17:22

Gama workers protest over payroll move
Last updated: 25-04-05, 14:30

Turkish workers in dispute with Gama Construction over pay and conditions are protesting at the company's headquarters in Dublin this afternoon at its plan to dismiss them from their jobs and accommodation. 

Around 300 of the Turkish company's 800 staff in Ireland are on a work stoppage in protest over pay and conditions.

Gama, which has admitted to underpaying wages and failing to keep proper employment records, has told the workers they will be removed from its payroll and asked to leave their accommodation within the next five days.

Around 230 Gama employees are affected by the move, including 130 for whom the company says it has no work and wants to repatriate to Turkey.

The company said this evening that the protesting workers had not been sacked and added they had "jobs to return to either in Ireland or Turkey" but were "refusing to do so".

A statement issued on behalf of the company goes on to say that while as long as the protesting workers remained off the Gama payroll they were "no longer the responsibility of the company" and added that the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment had been advised that the work and residency permits "of many of these employees have expired".

Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins, who first raised questions about Gama in the Dáil, said the workers were beginning to get the wages which had been deposited in bank accounts in the Netherlands and now wanted to be compensated for unpaid overtime.

"They are absolutely determined to resist this bullying by Gama," he said.

Mr Higgins has advised the workers to stay in their accommodation so that the company will be forced to get court orders if it wants to move them. "The workers have to stay put until all the issues have been resolved," he said.

The protesting workers assembled in Ballymun at 2pm for the march to Gama's headquarters in the Norwood Business Park in Santry.

Last week, the High Court ruled that Minister for Enterprise and Employment Micheál Martin could not publish a labour inspectors' report on the company, pending further proceedings.

However, Judge Peter Kelly said the report could be released to the Garda fraud squad, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Revenue Commissioners, the director of corporate enforcement, the Competition Authority and the Garda National Immigration Bureau.

by Anti-GAMA Mon Apr 25, 2005 18:37

Turkish Workers’ Action Group
Press Notice Monday, 25th April 2005

GAMA Attempts to Starve Workers into Submission

· Hundreds of Workers March to GAMA Head Office Today

· Workers to Fight Vindictive Sackings and Threatened Eviction

GAMA management has stopped providing food to workers at its Ballymun site
who are on a work stoppage. This brutal attempt to try and force workers
into submission is reminiscent of the tactics of William Martin Murphy and
the ruthless Dublin employers when they tried to break trade unionism in
the 1913 Lockout. However, hundreds of GAMA workers who marched from
Ballymun to the company’s corporate headquarters today, resolved to
continue their stoppage and step up their protest.

GAMA has already vindictively said it is sacking over 300 workers who are
on a work stoppage for the past three weeks. Disgracefully, GAMA has also
threatened to evict workers from their accommodation. GAMA workers are
accommodated on the sites where they work in prefabricated buildings with
six bunk beds to a room.

GAMA workers discovered only three weeks ago that the company was hiding
wages not paid to them in a bank in Amsterdam. As a result of the
publicity and the workers’ campaign, GAMA has been forced to transfer those
funds to the workers’ personal bank accounts. However there are
substantial outstanding wages for the huge numbers of hours worked with no
pay. Typically GAMA workers were obliged to labour for an 80-hour plus
week and were paid only €2.20 an hour basic pay in most cases plus €100.
For a 320 hour month, the pay was less than €1,000. Another outstanding
issue is that a group of “fixed wage” workers received only €800 a month
for the same amount of work as others and these workers have no funds in
Finansbank Holland.

GAMA workers are now appealing for support from other workers to bring
their struggle to a successful conclusion. Irish and other construction
workers coming to their aid , including with industrial action, would
assist greatly. This in turn would be a very big achievement for all
workers to counter the risk of other employers trying to force down the
trade union pay rates and worsen the condition off all workers.