Hard labour

Pawel Fikus came to London last October with dreams of making some decent money. Although he studied IT at university, he had been working in Poland as a carpenter. But jobs were scarce and wages poor.

Fikus and his four friends had found a firm on the internet promising to pay at least £4.80 an hour with the potential to earn between £1200 to £1500 fixing ceilings on a London site, accommodation included.

The first surprise was the accommodation. Eight people were sleeping in two rooms, four of them on the floor with no mattresses or covers. "I put T-shirts on the floor," says Fikus. "And cover myself with this." He points to the curtain in the basement flat he now rents with his friends.

They worked for a month, 10 hours a day, Monday to Friday, and five hours on Saturdays. But they received no money. They would eventually get about £300 each for the month.

There is nothing unusual about this story. Non-craft workers from Poland, Lithuania, Romania and Russia are often paid much less than UK workers to do exactly the same jobs, according to Bob Blackman, national secretary for construction at the Transport & General Workers Union. "We have got people in the industry that don't have any ethics or compunction about exploiting people."

It could be happening on your project. Many underpaid Eastern European workers are happy with their lot because they are earning so much more than they could do at home. A carpenter in Poland could expect to earn £200 a month.

No paperwork

Fikus was working for a Polish-run firm that was a subcontractor to a trade contractor. We cannot name the firm for legal reasons. The men had no written contracts and received no pay slips, except for Fikus who got a handwritten note.

"I didn't have a contract. The boss always told me , ‘later, later'," he says.

The managing director of the trade contractor tells me that the subcontractor in question is paid on piecework. "What they pay their people is between the company and their workers," he says. He adds that he also has Polish people working as ceiling fixers, but that he pays them £12 an hour.

Initially, two of the men, Fikus and Mirek Kadziela agreed to tell me their story. I met them in their flat. They come across as polite, educated people. They seem resigned rather than angry about the treatment they received, perhaps because they have good jobs now.

I ask why they didn't leave sooner. "To start with, they thought it was normal," the interpreter tells me. "There are not many people who are willing to help you. They were working and keeping their mouths shut."

Kadziela, who worked for the firm for two-and-a-half months before he found another job, earned a grand total of £1300. He does not have any English. When I ask through an interpreter how he felt, he says: "I was scared." Kadziela had sold his car, a Citroën, to pay his fare over. He had no means of getting home. None of the men received any money until 50 days after they had started work.

When challenged on why his pay was so low, the boss told Kadziela that they were paid on piecework and that they hadn't met the criteria. This was the first Kadziela had heard of piecework. But there was always the promise that the money would improve.

Fikus worked for five weeks and received £394. This was after £125 was deducted because he had been sent on a day's scissor lift training.

On a second visit to the flat, the other three also agreed to talk to me and be photographed for this article, although by this time Kadziela has returned to Poland.

I didn’t have a contract. The boss always told me ‘later, later’

Pawel Fikus

Charged for training

Daniel Szyrwinski worked for four weeks and received no money. He had been sent on two days' training to use a scissor lift and for scaffolding, which he was told cancelled out what he had earned. It wasn't until I started making enquiries for this story that he and Fikus even received their tickets.

Blackman says: "That's an illegal deduction from pay under the 1986 Pay Act. And the employer also has a legal duty under section two of the Health and Safety at Work Act. You are not allowed to make people pay for training."

Jacek Zatawny, who has two children back home in Poland, was paid £300 for five weeks. His brother Tomasz, who came over later than the others, earned £120 for two weeks.

The first time I speak to the Polish firm's representative, he tells me that sometimes people expect more money than they get because they don't understand the British system. "What people don't understand is that they have to pay tax and National Insurance contributions." He also deducts money for accommodation from the workers: "Peanuts," he says, "£30 or £35" each a week.

He claims that he has never paid any of his workers late and that everyone is paid for the hours they work. He has always paid at least the minimum wage, he says. That's £4.85 an hour until 1 October 2005 and £5.05 an hour now,

for people aged 22 and over. Some people get £5.40 an hour, he says. He stresses several times: "We never did anything against the law or tax or National Insurance contributions."

When I speak to the representative a second time, the men have given me permission to mention their names. Their ex-boss has already worked out who has been talking to me. His story is that they came over to England intending to leave him. He says it is he who has been exploited.

The representative claims the men lied about their experience. Four of the men had worked as carpenters. Tomasz is a photographer. "We told him we don't know everything," says Fikus when I ask him about this. "He told me ‘it's no problem, I will teach you.' In two weeks we learn, we are doing everything."

Why were they paid so little, I ask? The boss insists they were paid £5.05 an hour. But they were actually trainees, he adds, and what he didn't realise at the time was that he really only had to pay them £4.25. "So I was overpaying them." When I say the sums don't add up, he says: "I paid them for the hours they worked. Not the hours of having a cigarette, hours of wandering around, hiding somewhere."

I wonder if the unions can help people like Fikus and Kadziela. Blackman says the TGWU does have a Polish-speaking official in London. UCATT, the construction union, has none. Both have published leaflets in Eastern European languages advising workers of their rights.

I ask the Polish men if they thought about contacting a union, but they didn't know anything about unions. And, with their limited English, who could they ask?

There is an unusually happy ending to this story. Someone found out about their situation and rather than looking the other way, this person found them jobs with another contractor. At the time of going to press Fikus, Szyrwinski and the Zatawny brothers were earning about £1600 a month after tax and were very happy about that. Mirek had returned to Poland, having been laid off when the work finished.

He hopes to return to the UK after Easter.

I ask Fikus if his early experiences have coloured his view of the UK. "There are good people and bad people everywhere," he says. "We are just very happy that we have good jobs now."