Migrant builders threat to Olympic 'skills legacy'

PROMISES of a "skills legacy" from the London Olympics were in doubt today as it emerged that 20,000 migrant workers had registered for jobs in the main 2012 borough in the past year.

The surge in new National Insurance numbers in Newham has prompted concerns over pledges to provide thousands of skilled construction jobs to the local community.

About 2,700 workers are on the Olympics site, rising to 9,000 by 2010.

Estimates of the number of migrant workers on the site - mostly from Poland and Baltic states within the European Union - range from 10 to 70 per cent. According to the Olympic Delivery Authority's last month employment figures for the Olympic Park, 58 per cent of the 2,700 workforce were resident in London and 24 per cent from the East End. However, the figures do not indicate the worker's nationality - or how long they have lived in Britain.

Labour MP Frank Field, who published the National Insurance figures, said: "If I was the Olympics minister I would be getting concerned. It is totally lawful but British taxpayers and lottery players are paying for jobs for foreign workers and it is not what we signed up for." The ODA has promised a skills legacy for east London and is in the forefront of the Government's agenda under which Gordon Brown promised "British jobs for British workers".

The ODA has a plant training school at the Olympic Park and stresses that one in 10 of its workforce was previously unemployed. But the ODA is also under pressure to balance its books after losing £500 million in private sector investment in the past year with the credit crunch and, according to unions, has targeted savings on labour costs.

Construction workers' union Ucatt is increasing the pressure on the ODA to continue to honour agreed minimum site rates. It is thought that migrant workers hired through agencies are typically paid up to £2 less per hour than their British counterparts.

A spokesman said: "We are disappointed that more local people are not trained on the site in traditional construction apprenticeships to create a real skills legacy."

Hackney MP Diane Abbott told a Commons debate on the Olympic legacy: "One way in which the big contractors are getting round and massaging the figures for local labour is by bringing labourers from all over Europe into the Olympic boroughs and putting them in hostels.

"Those labourers are then counted as local people but in fact they have been shipped in from all parts of Europe." However the ODA said its site enrolment form distinguishes between permanent addresses and temporary ones. A spokesman said: "We are trying to ensure that where possible the Olympic Park workforce reflects the diversity of the local area and offers opportunities to help unemployed people back into work. We take care with the figures that we publish and ask every worker on the site for both their current address and their permanent UK address and we only report our figures based on the permanent address."

The big rise in NI numbers issued in Newham has also been driven by the East London line project and the Stratford City retail complex, bringing the total number of construction workers in Stratford to more than 5,000.