Electricians walked off the £220m project in London’s Covent Garden on 10 August after a hydraulic platform in the backstage area was lowered without warning while three electricians worked below it. The men escaped injury.
The electricians returned to work the following day, but after a stormy meeting with representatives from electrical union AEEU they walked out, insisting the site was unsafe. They eventually returned to work on 12 August after construction manager Schal revised safety procedures in the backstage area.
The opera house has been the subject of a number of safety scares, and sparks have staged several walk-outs in protest at safety standards.
Last December, a 3-tonne crane on the roof of the James Street building toppled over. Two weeks ago, Building reported that Schal was offering a £2000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a phantom saboteur who is dropping building-material missiles on workers from the site’s 50 m high fly-tower.
A spokesman for Schal said: “The area where the men were working now has a new enhanced work procedure in place.” He refused to comment further.
The scare comes as construction union UCATT is taking Schal to an industrial tribunal under the “whistle-blowers’ act”. UCATT claims one of its safety representatives was sacked from his job as an engineer at Schal’s BT Workstyle 2000 site in Brentwood, Essex, after raising safety concerns on the £80m project.
The union has submitted an application to the employment tribunal at Stratford, east London, under the Public Interest Disclosure Act, which protects workers who make public alleged wrong-doings at work from dismissal and workplace harassment.
The tribunal will be the first test case for the legislation, which came into force last month.
Schal’s spokesman said it had not been informed about the tribunal, but added: “We take all safety concerns seriously and took his [the safety representative’s] comments seriously. We played no part in him being removed from the site. That was a decision taken by [subcontractor] Cinnamond because its workload was reduced.”
