Turkish workers at Gama Construction plan a further protest against the company today in an intensifying row over their pay and conditions.
Several hundred Gama employees in Dublin walked off sites at Ballymun and Balgaddy yesterday to march through the city centre to Leinster House.
At a meeting afterwards in Liberty Hall, they authorised union leaders to seek detailed information from the company about money held in workers' names in bank accounts in Amsterdam.
The existence of the accounts was made public last week by Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins, who travelled to the Netherlands with four former Gama employees.
The four discovered accounts in their names in a branch of Finansbank, with amounts ranging from €4,500 to €23,000.
Mr Higgins claimed the men had been unaware of the accounts until they were "coached" by the company recently to tell inspectors from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment that they had money held in them.
This was denied by Gama, which said all employees had been informed of the accounts and had signed documentation to open them. In a statement yesterday, the company said it was issuing a letter in Turkish to each employee "confirming their access to these monies and explaining how they should go about it". The statement was issued after the city centre demonstration by Gama workers.
A further protest is planned for today at the Tynagh Energy power plant in east Galway, which is currently under construction and in which Gama has an 80 per cent stake.
The Turkish-owned company has been at the centre of controversy since Mr Higgins made allegations in the Dáil in February about its employment practices.
Accusing the company of engaging in "immigrant worker exploitation of massive proportions", he said it demanded "grotesque" working hours, paid unskilled staff €2-€3 an hour and housed workers in "company barracks".
The allegations were denied by Gama, which yesterday reiterated that its workers were paid the full agreed rates. It did admit last month, however, that most of its 800-odd Turkish workers had been underpaid last year due to an "error".
Minister for Employment Micheál Martin immediately suspended the issuing of work permits to the company. Inspectors have recently completed an investigation, but Gama secured an interim High Court injunction last Friday preventing the release of the draft report.
Gama said yesterday the work permits of 140 of its Dublin-based workers had expired and it believed this was a significant factor in the protest. "They will be repatriated to Turkey shortly, after proper notification to the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment," it said.
