Sean Treacy killed on building site
By Roisín de Rossa
Last week two building workers lost their lives in a tragic
accident in Co Kildare. One of them was Sean Treacy, well known
republican from the Heath; the other was Robert Dunne from
Robertstown.
Both were working at Ballymany, just outside Newbridge. They were
laying sewerage piping 15 foot down when the trench they were in
collapsed. Sean was only on the site by coincidence. He was
helping out a friend - as so often he did.
It took over an hour for workers and firemen to scrabble the
earth away with their bare hands to reach them.
There was no shuttering on the trench, yet in construction sites
in the UK shuttering deep trenches is regulation. The site would
normally have been closed for the traditional annual fortnight
holiday, but stayed open in the rush to complete the luxury homes
in a multi-million pound development.
Their deaths bring to 14 the number of deaths on building sites
this year.
``It should be regulation on all the sites that developers pay a
full time health and safety inspector,'' said a colleague of
Sean's, who grew up with him.
There are now over 110,000 people working in the building
industry. One in every 50 can expect to be injured or maimed this
year.
The Minister for Labour Affairs, Tom Kitt, speculates ``The
tremendous increase in the number of workers more than likely
means young and untrained workers are being taken on.'' The clear
implication is that it is the building workers' own fault that
they get killed on the sites.
SIPTU has proposed that workers themselves become safety auditors
on the site and have the power to shut down the site as the only
way that safety can be improved. These proposals have been with
Mr Kitt since May.
Meanwhile the Construction Industry Federation declares that
safety on the sites is at the very top of its agenda. The CIF
will look at SIPTU's proposals, but considers it would be ``highly
unusual'' to grant statutory powers - such as the power to shut a
site down - to `non-statutory' workers. Unusual indeed.
There were six fatal accidents in construction in the 80s. Why
have things got so much worse in the last few years? Most
commentators believe it is because subcontractors have replaced
direct labour, where workers are employed `off the books' on
C45s.
About half the workers on the sites are on the C45 system, where
a worker is in the `black economy', without proper insurance.
Because they are `self-employed', workers have no rights to
holiday pay, sick benefit, redundancy, travel time, subsistence
payments, or any of the rights which workers have long fought to
win, including the right to life and safe working conditions.
Under the ``subbie'' system, the dole subsidises the
sub-contractors' wage bill, and in most cases it's a ruthless,
cut-throat race to get the job finished with little regard to
safety or participation of a labour force in determining safety
conditions.
``The subbie system is the lump all over again,'' says Dennis
Farrell, regional organiser BATU (Building and Allied Trades
Union) which successfully took on the courts and the employers in
the battle to reinstate direct labour on the sites, and better
conditions for building workers.
BATU closed down Crampton's DCU site when workers refused to
accept cash in hand payment. They demanded legal employment, the
payment of PAYE and direct employment by the company.
The Department of Employment and the Tax office refused to take
up against this illegal `employment'. When BATU workers went on
strike for legal conditions of employment, the Courts decided it
was impossible for two or three workers to hold up a
multi-million pound site, injuncted the workers to stop the
picket, call off their strike, to cease leafleting, or discussing
the strike in a `provocative manner' and charged the union
£500,000 for Cramptons' costs.
However BATU ignored the injunctions. They formed a group called
`The Building Workers Against the Black Economy' and closed down
two other Crampton sites. As the pickets spread, Crampton's
capitulated, reinstated the workers who had been sacked and paid
the union's costs. Since then BATU has won several disputes
refusing to deal with sub-contractors or to work illegally, in
Carlow, Kilkenny, Limerick and Monaghan.
But the fact that these battles have been so hard fought, that
the SIPTU proposal still lies on Mr Kitt's desk, that the Revenue
and courts were not prepared to enforce legal conditions of
employment, has meant that building workers, like Robert and
Sean, must still take their life in their hands going to work.
Sean took his life in his hands many times - as several
generations of Republicans know - underground, in the air, up at
the border in the 50s Campaign, cutting down trees to welcome
Princess Margaret to Birr, driving a lorry load of food aid along
precipice roads in Bosnia, and so much more that will never be
told.
He didn't need to die digging sewage pipes for luxury homes in
Newbridge one Monday afternoon.
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