Taking off

"It does send a ripple around," said Construction Confederation industrial relations director Gerry Lean.

Frank Westerman, the Amicus official looking after Terminal Five (T5), is more bullish. He warned that electricians were willing to fight for an equally generous deal: "We have become the top dogs in the country and that's where we will stay. If there's going to be anarchy, we will be the biggest anarchists out there."

How far the 'ripple' from the agreement will spread was up for discussion just days after the T5 story broke. Union bosses from UCATT, GMB and TGWU sat down with the Construction Confederation for the first of a series of meetings where they will negotiate a new national agreement. They will set minimum hourly rates and allowances for different types of worker.

The last three-year-long agreement will be up this summer. But whatever minimum wage they agree, good tradesmen will move to the jobs with the best pay and conditions. The pressure will be on other major projects to offer similar incentives for productivity and quality.

The immediate impact of the deal, reportedly £32,000 a year for unskilled workers, £55,000 for skilled, was felt at T5 and in the companies with contracts there. Switchboards were jammed, queues formed outside the T5 employment office. Everybody wanted a job on T5.

Meanwhile, another deal – between M&E contractors and union Amicus – was put on hold whilst negotiators tried to discover the real figures behind the headlines. And the disgruntled sparkies already on T5, who are currently on £1 per hour less than colleagues on other Heathrow jobs while they wait for their T5 deal, threatened to demand a ballot to strike.

MODEL WAGES
UCATT general secretary George Brumwell, who had been busy commenting on the deal over the weekend, was strangely non-committal on its wider repercussions. "This is a one-off, but it's a good model. That's the reality of it."

Brumwell, increasingly moderate in latter years, has said that this is a high-point in his career and that he is looking to retire now. So won't this monumental deal, which covers working conditions and occupational health as well as pay rates, impact on other projects? "I wouldn't like to say. But this is a giant leap to lift the standards and respect for the workers. It recognises that there's more to life than just a big wage packet."

Amicus had quite a different slant on the industry-wide impact. "It's already caused us a lot of problems," said Westerman, on the Monday after the news broke. "All our members have been calling to see if they can work at Heathrow. It has caused absolute mayhem." Callers were directed towards the contractors.

Westerman's principal concern about the deal was that it seemed improbable that M&E contractors could pay their workers – always on higher wages than skilled construction workers such as chippies – a proportionally higher figure.

"We are now telling the employers and BAA that if they think they are going to be on more than our members they will soon find out that if we are going to be pigs in the trough, we will be fatter pigs than anybody."

Westerman recalled the Jubilee Line, the project on which striking sparkies made themselves the 'top dogs' in the 1990s.

Later in the week, Westerman had spoken to his members on the site. Amicus had hoped to announce its 'major project agreement' on the Tuesday following the Laing O'Rourke news. This would be a special set of conditions and pay which would hopefully be rolled out from T5 onto other prestigious sites such as Wembley.

The delay in sealing the deal is making the sparkies on T5 restless. "If this doesn't get sorted soon, our guys want to be balloted. They are getting fed up with it," said Westerman.

If there’s anarchy, we’LL be the biggest anarchists out there

Frank Westerman, Amicus

Contractors such as Severfield Rowen and Hathaway Roofing will also be feeling the heat of the Laing O'Rourke agreement. A BAA spokesman confirmed that other negotiations are underway, but would only add: "We are confident agreements will be reached to properly reward workers across the project."

Earlier in the month a small band of balaclava-clad demonstrators had gathered outside the T5 site. Their banners protested against structural steel contractor Severfield's plan to use its in-house pay agreement rather than the national one.

A source suggested that the demonstrators were disgruntled ex-Severfield employees. No one at Severfield Rowen wanted to comment on the situation, although the firm does have a good reputation within the industry for the way it treats its workers.

UNION leverage
Will Brumwell and the other unions play down the importance of the Laing O'Rourke deal at the national agreement negotiations? Unlikely.

The current agreed hourly rate is £7.30 for a joiner. The unions have put in a pay claim of £12 an hour, which equates to a rise of 37%.

At the last round of talks, the unions claimed for £10 per hour from £6.05 (a firefighter-busting 65% rise) but settled for £7.30 (21%).

For site managers in London, these talks are of little consequence. Market forces rule. Terminal 5 will increase pressure on wages due to its immense size. At its peak BAA forecasts there will be 5,000 workers on the project. "That will push rates up, especially within a 25-mile radius," Lean predicted.

Outside London it is a different story.

The unions will be pushing to close the pay disparity between £150-a-day chippies in the capital and their poorer cousins in construction slow-spots such as deepest Lincolnshire.

One of the ways that the unions will be pushing is by using the leverage of another three-year agreement. The deal could, in theory, be one year long. The unions will be arguing that if contractors want the tendering and planning benefits of a longer-term deal, they will have to raise the minimum rates.

Without decent rises across the board for building workers, the industry will fail to attract any new blood, and the fewer and fewer quality people will be soaked up by a handful of major jobs. Like T5.