Building firms must be policed

PERHAPS more than any other sector of Irish industry, the construction business is perceived as susceptible to the activities of cowboy operators.

Without any doubt, confidence in the industry is sure to be undermined by today’s report showing that the Pensions Board is pursuing hundreds of building firms for allegedly ripping-off employees by not paying their pension contributions.

So widespread is the problem that half the building companies in the country have, in previous internal reports, been found to be non-compliant with the pensions law by holding back payments amounting to a whopping €35 million a year.

No matter how cut-throat the industry, and regardless of what kind of pressure a firm may face, there can be no excuse for putting the welfare of employees at risk for what can only be described as unbridled greed.

To be fair, many firms maintain standards of the highest order, treating their employees with fairness and decency. However, as illustrated in a succession of banner headline cases, others are not slow to jettison their bounden responsibilities.

On top of lives being put at risk by unscrupulous elements of the industry, some of the country’s biggest firms have been named and shamed for exploiting workers. Among them were some of Ireland’s leading construction firms with lucrative contracts on major Government infrastructure projects.

The public needs no reminding of appalling instances where lives were lost because safety precautions were deliberately ignored. In some cases, families were left without mortality benefits because deceased workers had not been registered by their firms.

At a time when the industry has experienced an unprecedented bonanza, the suspected scale of withholding pension contributions is shocking in the extreme.

Under the pensions law, every building firm must register its workers in a Construction Federation scheme covering both pension and sickness contributions. Amounting to just over €6 a week, the company share of the pension contribution involves sickness benefits plus a €22,000 mortality lump sum, payable to the families of victims of fatal accidents in the workplace.

Incredibly, around half the number of all registered construction firms in the country have, at one time or another, been accused of dodging their legal pension obligations. Instead, the money was pocketed.

Workers have every right to be incensed over such a scenario. Venting their anger, they staged a protest march on the Department of Justice last month calling for the jailing of company bosses found guilty of ripping off employees by pocketing the pension contribution.

Having come in for strong criticism over lapses of safety in the past, scores of building firms are once again undermining the credibility of their own industry.

The head of the industry’s policing agency has rightly urged construction workers to come forward if their pension rights are denied by employers.

Any firm that deliberately withholds pension payments, thus putting the long-term interests of workers and their families in jeopardy, must be made subject to the full rigours of the law.

Unless there is a genuine crack-down on this unconscionable practice, firms will continue to flout the law. The rights and entitlements of workers must not be sacrificed on the altar of financial expediency and naked greed.