Casualised agency labour will replace directly employed workers, as under BESNA there will be no insistence on direct labour as per the existing agreements.
 

Employers have recently stated that BESNA contains no reference to short-time working or lay off, however paragraph 5.4 (a) makes a clear reference to this provision insofar as it will impact on pay.
 

Despite what the bosses say, BESNA paragraphs 6.4 and 6.5 clearly allow for the rest and meal breaks to be combined at the ‘discretion’ of the Employer. We all know what that means – removal of the paid 15 minute morning rest break.
 

Unlike the JIB, BESNA fails to define the working day as 7.5 hours and clearly states in paragraph 6.3 that “the length of the working day and the hours of attendance shall be determined by the Employer”, this undermines your defined working week and the chance for overtime payments and an afternoon break.
 

BESNA undermines the existing JIBs’ travel allowances, and gives the Employer ‘absolute discretion’ to determine what constitutes the ‘shop’ and reimburse the cheapest possible fare (paragraph 7.3), avoiding existing travel cost allowances without even guaranteeing a standard second class rail fare.
 

The Employers see your travel time and accommodation allowances as a prohibitive cost to their business, their intention is that the cost of your time, mileage and fuel to get to and from jobs over 25 miles will be out of your own pocket.
 

Employers will impose BELL to BELL working which means clocking facilities will be located as close to where you work as practicable instead of at the site offices. This means any time you spend walking to and from your work area will not be paid and will result in your working day being extended by up to 1.5 hours without pay.
 

The BESNA proposals that workers could have to undergo medical examination will have potential sinister implications. The JIB combined benefits scheme including ECIBA and BUPA benefits, does not discriminate against anyone joining, regardless of their medical history or state of health. Furthermore, the life insurance element is for ‘death by any cause’. In contrast BESNA looks like it will have the ability to pick and choose who and what they cover.

Management tried their hardest to convince us it is a good thing. They told us it was a better contract, that we would benefit as employees and they are employers.

They were half right. They certainly benefit from it. We don’t.

What made us really angry was when we compared the existing and new agreements: the new agreement is about putting every single term in the employers’ favour and wording it so loosely that it can be interpreted in many different ways, none of which benefit us.

We were told if we didn’t sign we might lose our jobs so we started talking to our union, Unite, and came to the conclusion the only way forward was to walk off jobs and hold protests.

They are still saying sign or be sacked. We have no other option. It’s not just our jobs and futures on the line – it’s also the young people who come out of college wanting to be an electrician or a plumber and won’t be able to because these rogue employers are trying to wipe out such professions.

Things all started a little over two months ago when eight of the 14 major UK contractors (Balfour Beatty, Crown House, NG Baileys, T. Clarkes, MJN Colston, Gratte Brothers, Shepherds Engineering, Matthew Hall) informed their workforce of the intention to withdraw from the long-standing National Working Agreements, drawing up a new contract of employment called the Building Engineering Services National Agreement (BESNA).

As far as I can tell, the main reason for the BESNA is to save money on labour costs as this is the only expense that companies can control. They see 75% of the work currently undertaken by their highly trained employees as semi-skilled and they do not like the fact that they have to pay the same hourly rate for every task.

The new contract makes it flexible for the contractors to raise and lower employees’ pay, depending on which tasks they have been assigned. In worse case scenarios this can result in an hourly wage cut of 35%.

Here’s a few of the main points in the contract that particularly concern myself and my colleagues:

grading of tradesmen – currently carried out by the bodies mentioned above, the new contract puts all grading in the hands of the employer so they can raise and lower your hourly rate at any time
travel pay – will be dramatically cut and will also be paid at the employer’s discretion
overtime rates – weekend overtime rates have been dramatically cut and even receiving them is up the employer’s discretion.
merging of electrical and mechanical trades – they propose to remove electricians and plumbers from the equation totally, replacing them with building services engineers (whatever that is!)
 unfair dismissal – we’re currently able to claim unfair dismissal from our first day. That term has been removed.
redundancy rules – have been changed. Currently, employers are not allowed to make redundancies whilst they have agency/temporary workers engaged on their projects. This term has been removed, so no protection is given at all for employees
apprenticeships – there will be no more electrical and plumbing apprenticeships offered by these companies as they want to build a work force of multi-skilled workers, trained in a little bit of everything but specialising in nothing.
I could go on and on: the old agreement is more than 250 pages long. BESNA is only 48 pages, which in itself is a sign that people are going to be losing a lot. Every single term in BESNA gives all the power to the employer. They get final say on everything. Nothing is set in stone.

And that is why we’re angry, and why we’ll keep fighting until we win this campaign.