Workers at Gama get go-ahead for €40m claim

THE HIGH Court has cleared the way for 491 Turkish construction workers to bring an action in Ireland, rather than Turkey, against their employers for some €40.3 million compensation over alleged underpayment of wages and benefits while they were working here on State contracts.

Ms Justice Elizabeth Dunne yesterday rejected the challenge by Gama Endustri Tesisleri Imalat Montaj AS (Gama Turkey) and its wholly owned Irish company, Gama Construction Ireland Ltd, to the jurisdiction of the Irish courts to hear the workers’ action against both companies.

The workers are claiming some €40.3 million compensation and damages for alleged breach of contract and breach of duty. They are seeking exemplary damages arising from the manner in which their wages were allegedly withheld and/or how their employment was terminated when they made complaints.

The cases arise as a result of the involvement from 2000 of both Gama companies in National Development Programme infrastructural works in Ireland. Gama employed 1,066 people here in 2003, and in 2005, when a dispute over wages broke out, it had 927 permits for workers from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment.

In February 2005, then Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins told the Dáil Gama “imports” workers from Turkey and paid them about €2-€3 per hour in breach of the minimum wage law. He claimed the workers were required to work “grotesque” hours, were accommodated in company barracks and their situation was a modern version of “bonded labour”.

The Minister for Enterprise, who said his department had received assurances from Gama Ireland that all provisions of Irish employment law would be observed and the “going rate” would be paid to all Turkish workers, ordered its labour inspectorate to investigate the claims.

Gama Turkey later sought an undertaking that the inspector’s report would not be published and, when that was not given, took legal proceedings. In 2009, the Supreme Court ruled there were no powers of general publication of the report and those entitled to have sight of it were confined to State bodies with a criminal prosecutorial function.

In her reserved judgment yesterday on the jurisdictional issue, Ms Justice Dunne noted both defendants had entered conditional appearances in the proceedings for the sole purpose of contesting the jursidiction of the Irish courts to hear the action.

The judge ruled the plaintiff workers had established that the appropriate forum for the hearing of the proceedings is Ireland, not Turkey. The plaintiffs had demonstrated the action has “the most real and substantial connection” with this jursidiction.