Building sector complaints surge

COMPLAINTS to the Labour Court about construction firms failing to register workers for a mandatory pension and sickness scheme rose 75% last year after the Irish Examiner exposed the issue.

In a series of Irish Examiner investigations in late 2003, the Construction Federation Operatives Pension Scheme (CFOPS) was shown to have significant non-compliance problems, which left many workers and their families without benefit in the case of injury or death.

Numerous families of those killed in the industry had been denied vital death benefits because employers declined to register and pay for their employees to join the scheme. Up to 50,000 construction workers who should have been registered were not covered.