Workers to fight vindictive sackings by GAMA management

national | worker & community struggles and protests | press release

Monday April 25, 2005 12:13

by TWAG

Protest March to GAMA head office, today, Monday April 25th, Northwood Business Park, Santry; Leaving Ballymun Beside Statoil at 2PM.

Turkish Workers’ Action Group

Protest March to GAMA head office, today, Monday April 25th, Northwood Business Park, Santry; Leaving Ballymun Beside Statoil at 2PM.

Workers to fight vindictive sackings by GAMA management

Workers to fight GAMA management threat to evict them from their accommodation

Hundreds of GAMA workers on stoppage are having a protest march from Ballymun to the company’s corporate headquarters today, Monday, leaving at 2PM.

In a vindictive move, Turkish multinational construction company GAMA has said it is sacking over 300 workers who are on a work stoppage for the past three weeks. GAMA workers vowed to fight the company’s attempt to lay them off.

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 about this 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. Meanwhile, GAMA was blatantly claiming that it was paying the pay rates agreed with the construction trade unions.

Appeal for support from other workers
GAMA workers are now appealing for support from other workers to bring their struggle to a successful conclusion. Outstanding issues are 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. And of course the massive overtime worked for which they are owed.

Irish and other construction workers coming to the aid of GAMA workers, including with industrial action, would assist greatly in winning the justice for which they are fighting. 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.