POLISH workers are bringing solidarity to Swindon.

The GMB union has launched a campaign to recruit Polish workers in a bid to improve both their working conditions and their British-born counterparts.

GMB senior officer Paul Maloney said the union was determined to get immigrant workers their rights and end gangmaster abuses that are growing in the town.

advertisement

Mr Maloney said similar pushes in Southampton had attracted more than 130 workers to one meeting alone and provided the union with crucial information about abusive employers.

He said unscrupulous employers were sending agents to Poland to lure workers to Britain on false promises.

When the Poles arrive, they are paid less than resident workers and threatened with the sack if they protest.

Mr Maloney said the employers then use the illegal conditions forced on the Poles to undercut rates for UK-born workers - and he said making Poles aware of their rights therefore protects UK workers.

"It takes us into identifying abusive employers," Mr Maloney said.

Mr Maloney added that there were gangmasters operating in Swindon providing workers for the construction, food production and service industries.

He said the gangmasters would lure Polish workers to Swindon by quoting them pay rates that looked attractive in the former Eastern Bloc but which fell short of UK laws.

When they arrived, the gangmasters would put the workers in houses where they had to pay twice the market rent, then charge them for transport to work and dock their pay.

"They are setting worker against worker," Mr Maloney said. "It should be the same rate of pay.

"It's across all industries - construction, food industries, service industries."

"By organising the Polish workers we are protecting all workers.

"The GMB is trying to tell UK workers that."

Mr Maloney also said the union had a message to employers.

He said: "You are in the European market - if there are skills and vacancies, why not use those people, but not abuse them?

"We are going to organise the Polish workers in Swindon."

Mr Maloney said the union is already helping immigrant workers with contract and National Insurance questions and problems.

In January it plans a recruitment meeting in Swindon.