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Ainscough angers with ‘no lift, no pay’ policy

2 Feb 16 Yesterday saw near total shutdown of the UK’s largest mobile crane hire firm as the first of a series of strikes took place.

And the company now stands accused of incentivising its crane operators to flout safety protocols with a ‘no lift, no pay’ policy for some of its newest recruits. If a lift is called off because of windy weather – as safety demands it must – the operator gets no pay that day.

However, Ainscough Crane Hire said that these new contract terms applied only to ‘a small temporary labour pool’.

Ainscough is already embroiled in a pay dispute. To have its safety ethics challenged in this way will be a further blow for a company that has always prided itself on industry leadership and invested in industry-leading equipment.

The Unite union, which represents crane operators at Ainscough Crane Hire, said that pickets were out in force across the company’s 30 depots and fewer than 10 of the company’s 500 cranes went to work – excluding the 30 cranes operating on NAECI (National Agreement for the Engineering Construction Industry).

In the pay dispute, the company’s Unite members voted overwhelmingly for strike action with 90% voting in favour on an 83% turnout to reject the company’s two-year pay deal. More than 90% voted for action short of strike.

Monday’s strike action was the first in a series of escalating actions planned over the coming weeks through to 23rd March 2016. A programme of overtime bans started on 30th January and will end on 20th March.

The union said that the dispute had been further ‘soured’ by Ainscough attempting to introduce zero hours contracts to the industry – ‘undermining the existing collective agreement’. According to Unite, Ainscough recently made up to two dozen redundancies and then started recruiting operators on £15/hr on a casual basis, not paying them travel time or for working days if lifts had to be cancelled because of the weather or for any other reasons. In this way, Ainscough is actually incentivising operators to flout safety, the union said.

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Unite national officer for construction Bernard McAulay, said: “Our members are highly skilled professionals, operating cranes on some of the UK’s largest construction projects, including the Forth Road Bridge, aircraft carriers in Rosyth and UK-wide rail infrastructure projects.

“Ainscough has been sent a clear warning today by the workforce. Our members demand fair treatment for their hard work. The company needs to get back to the negotiating table ready to reach an amicable settlement to resolve this long running dispute.

“However we fear that the drive to lower pay for the workforce won’t stop with this pay offer.  We are extremely concerned that Ainscough is now drawing up plans to rip up the industry-wide agreement by introducing zero hours contracts for a pool of workers.

“These workers will then be on hire and fire contracts reducing them to a disposable workforce.  This will have serious safety implications for what is already one of the most dangerous industries in the country.

“This makes an utter mockery of Ainscough’s motto ‘safety before profit’, but it will also put the company at risk of winning future public works contracts in Scotland where Unite is working hard to ensure that the government there sticks to its promise to ensure zero hours working is not normal practice.”

An Ainscough spokesman responded: “We absolutely are not replacing full time crane operators with zero hours contracts. What we have done is set up a small temporary labour pool of fully qualified personnel to assist in peak periods.”

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