Self employed Seb Coe Chairman of ODA hounds out self employed Romanians and Bulgarians from Olympic site deal with UCATT - International solidarity

We posted about the strange gagging orders re the Olympic development Authority suppliers and PMQ's attempting to reveal some niceties of supply of "sustainable (?) aggregates for the Stadium - Wednesday, January 28, 2009 Olympics delivery Authority has been gagging suppliers with draconian (and probably illegal) contracts which last 6 years -

Well evidently the truffle hounds of Westminter are on to the spoor of the fiddlers and their fiddles which £9Mn of expenditure of taxpayers hard earned funds necessarily generates -- See Independent 2/2/09 where it appears ;

1. Self-employed workers were banned from the Olympic site under an agreement signed late in 2007, after UCATT had warned that their presence invited illegal foreign labourers to seek work on the site, and could lead to strikes. The union claims that after a delay, the agreement is now being enforced. This was a a result of a slide around weasel word deal whereby Romanians and Bulgarians whose nations had joined the EU in 2006, were denied rights of equal access for work as other constituent EU nations citizens, to work in the UK, but they were granted an unrestricted right to start their own businesses here. The Romanians working on the Olympic site "claimed" they qualified to work because they were self employed.

Quite what the emplyment status, unionised or other of Chairman Lord Coe is remains unanswered (even if asked). See FOOTNOTE

2. Andy McSmith of the Independent in the above article reveals some 200 Romanian construction workers who were helping to build the 2012 Olympic Park have been "quietly sacked" in the past two months during a clampdown on illegal foreign labour, .... it has been alleged by a "senior source".

3. A PMQ (source cannot be referenced to Hansard but is widely quoted in the Press) revealed that nearly one in 20 of the workers employed there in 2008 had been arrested for working illegally. Between April and December 2008, 136 illegal immigrants were caught working on the site, according to figures obtained by the Conservatives. An answer to a written parliamentary question revealed that 16 had been prosecuted, 11 removed from the UK, 19 granted leave to remain, and 90 were either awaiting a decision, or awaiting travel documents prior to being removed from the UK.

4. Until last year, Romanians made up about 6 % of the workforce on the Olympic site, making them its third-biggest national group, after the British and Irish, according to one source. The wrokforce numbers will rise this year to about 6,000.

In another report an ODA spokesperson said: “These figures demonstrate our joint efforts with the UK Borders Agency (UKBA) to ensure people working on site are legally entitled to do so. Since early last year (2008) UKBA representatives have been on site working in partnership with our staff and contractors checking the documentation for every worker employed on the Olympic park. This protection will have led to many of these investigations and also we, our contractors and the Metropolitan Police facilitate intelligence-led investigations on site.”

FOOTNOTE : THis has nothing to do with the story in the Mail on Sunday and Sunday Mirror of a kiss and tell all about the size of his libido by ex bed / playmate and former mistress of ten years and mother of his aborted love child ("Sebastian certainly lived up to his Olympic reputation in the bedroom," ) Vanessa Lander, which was published just days after Lord Coe was put in charge of London's 2012 Olympic bid.