Are you watching Mr Hutton?

Construction union UCATT are calling on John Hutton the Business Secretary to ensure that he watches It’s a Free World, which will have its network premiere on Channel Four this evening (September 24).

The film by award winning director Ken Loach, portrays the plight of migrant workers and how they are exploited by unlicensed gangmasters and employment agencies.

Although fictional the film was highly researched and paints a graphically accurate picture of the burgeoning but brutal nature of Britain’s informal economy.

UCATT have been building up an extensive dossier of Gangmaster abuses of workers (both domestic and migrant) in the construction industry.

UCATT believe that the first step in reducing the exploitation suffered by thousands of workers employed in the construction industry, is by extending the Gangmasters Licensing Act to cover the construction industry.

While employment agencies and Gangmasters have to be licensed to supply labour to the agricultural, food processing and shellfish collection industries., they operate in other areas such as construction unchecked and unlicensed.

Despite UCATT having presented its dossier of evidence to Mr Hutton and his ministerial team at the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, the union has been told that extension of the GLA is unlikely.

DBERR ministers and officials have argued that the problems identified by UCATT are isolated and other bodies can deal with the problem.

Alan Ritchie, general secretary of UCATT, said: “John Hutton must watch tonight’s film. Maybe then he will understand why at the very least he must licence the casualised flexible labour market, which is rapidly growing in construction.”

As part of their campaign to extend the GLA to construction UCATT have submitted a contemporary motion to the Labour Party conference on the subject and hope that it will form part of the employment rights debate to be held at conference.

Mr Ritchie, added: “The Labour Party has always believed in fairness and equality. Hutton and his colleagues must act quickly to protect many of the most vulnerable workers in Britain.”