Alan Ritchie from UCATT talks to Personnel Today

Personnel Today, recently interviewed Alan Ritchie, General Secretary of UCATT. Here are some of the highlights:

Talking about the Olympic standoff Ritchie fears that unless the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) commits to the use of directly employed labour with proper employment contracts, it risks disaster.

"We're making it absolutely clear that we cannot accept a position where direct employment is not on the agenda....Direct employment would lead to better use of local labour, apprentices and improve health and safety on site".

He pointed to the successful Sydney Olympics, where direct employment was used and just one worker was killed.This compared to the Athens Olympics construction, which relied heavily on foreign labour, resulting in at least 13 deaths. Ritchie said there were probably more, as only the deaths of registered nationals were recorded.

"What we are saying to the ODA is that there is only one route to go down - the Australian route - all directly employed, working with unions in a framework for industrial relations," he said.

"Building work on the Olympic stadiums and village is due to start early next year, but so far no agreement has been reached. What the country doesn't want is another Wembley stadium debacle on its hands, Ritchie said."The ODA must learn the lessons from Wembley, where reliance on a subcontracted workforce led to chronic delays, confusion and spiralling costs," he added.

Of the Skills Shortage Ritchie said"Bogus self-employment is leading to huge skills shortages and increasing demand for migrant labour", Ritchie said. He estimates up to 55% of the 2.2 million building workers employed in the UK are operating under a false self-employment regime."

"We estimate about £2.5bn a year is being lost to the Treasury because of this issue," Ritchie said. "This is the private sector getting a subsidy from the taxpayer, and it's absolutely scandalous. The government said a new system introduced in April would curb this - it hasn't even scratched the surface."

Commenting on the Health and Safety Executive Research undertaken for the union last month which found its prosecutions for construction deaths fell from 42% to just 11% from 1998 to 2004, Ritchie said this is just not good enough. "The best way of murdering someone in the UK today is to set up a construction firm, break the Health and Safety at Work Act and end up with a paltry fine," he said. "Some of the fines handed out for deaths on-site are as little as £7,000 - it cannot be justified."