Immigrants and employee abuse: It doesn't just happen in New Orleans:

$17.54 (£8.80) a week is all that Lithuanian immigrant workers are being paid in a UK government project for a hospital. The Guardian (London) found this while doing some investigative reporting.

Alan Ritchie, general secretary of Ucatt (UK's Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians) said: "This case is the worst we have seen. These workers were virtually destitute." - The Guardian


This makes me wonder how much the construction workers building the border fence are getting paid - and if they are immigrants too...

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Migrant builder took home £8.80 for a week

· Union wins back pay for Lithuanians on NHS site
· MP to raise regulation issue in Commons

• Matthew Taylor and Esther Addley
• The Guardian,
• Monday June 30, 2008

• Eastern European migrants working on the construction of a £600m NHS hospital have been taking home as little as £8.80 for a 39-hour week, the Guardian has learned, in what has been described by union bosses as one of the worst instances of employee abuse in the building sector since EU enlargement.

  The group of around 12 men, most of whom are Lithuanian, are construction workers on the government-backed PFI project in Nottinghamshire. Though allegations of abuse of migrants' rights on construction sites are widespread across the country the scale in this instance has shocked unions and politicians.

  Michael Clapham, MP for Barnsley West and Penistone, who is due to raise the matter in parliament today, said: "This happened on a government project where there are good rules and a strong union - who knows what is happening on the hundreds of smaller sites around the UK?"

  According to industry guidelines and an agreement between unions and the building firm Skanska, which is overseeing the project, workers on the site should have been earning more than £7 an hour. But after deductions for rent, tool hire and utility bills, some of the Lithuanian employees were receiving so little observers say it left them virtually destitute.

  Payslips seen by the Guardian show that one man worked a 39-hour week and took home just £8.80 after his entire monthly rent was deducted in one week, in breach of the law. A second worker was paid £79.20 for a 63-hour week and a third worked 70 hours a week for just £66. As they were registered as self-employed they did not receive holiday or sick pay. One man had £228 taken from his pay in one week for tools. The men each had a further £76.80 deducted weekly as their payment to the "construction industry scheme", which technically registers them as self-employed, meaning their employers have no requirement to pay national insurance...

for complete Guardian article click here