Over 100 building workers, acting without the official backing of their unions, defied High Court injunctions to mount pickets on two Crampton sites in Dublin yesterday.
About 30 of them picketed the company's £11 million development at Dublin City University in Glasnevin, and 80 blocked the entrance to its £29 million development at the Smurfit Business School in University College, Dublin.
The picketing, organised by a group called Building Workers Against the Black Economy, lasted from 8 a.m. to 9.30 a.m. The organisers said there would be more pickets today and next week.
One picketer asked, "What's it coming to when the courts are locking people up for wanting to pay tax?"
Several picketers said they would continue with their action until C. and G. Crampton lifted the injunctions, or locked them up. The Clonskeagh picket was also attended by the Socialist Party TD, Mr Joe Higgins, who accused Crampton of preferring to hide behind company law rather than negotiate with workers and grant them their basic rights.
The disputes at both sites are about the company's practice of using sub-contractors rather than direct labour. The picketers, who asked not to be named, said that the sub-contractors were refusing to employ them within the PAYE system.
The company had secured an injunction barring the Building and Allied Trade Union from picketing the sites, on the basis that the dispute is with individual sub-contractors and should not disrupt other work on the sites. The union has also been found to have failed to comply with strike ballot procedures at the DCU site.
Subsequently, building workers at the UCD site decided to take unofficial action because they felt it was pointless to abide by procedures they feel are too cumbersome to be practical in an industry like construction.
High Court and Supreme Court rulings on the DCU dispute will in future require unions to make more stringent preparations for ballots, and define more concisely the type of action proposed. The judgments have caused some dismay among trade unions.
As far as the men on yesterday's picket lines were concerned, the issue was simple. They don't want to work for sub-contractors who refuse to "stamp the card".
Only 17 workers are directly involved in the two disputes, but building workers from other sites around the city turned up for the pickets yesterday. The mood was cheerful but defiant, even after Crampton's private security guards warned them that they were breaking the law and photographs were taken of the picketers and their cars.
Several picketers also criticised the Revenue Commissioners for failing to enforce the law. A spokeswoman for the commissioners said later that a major drive had been under way since November to root out illegal practices in the building industry. So far, over 400 sites had been visited in the Dublin area.
Crampton refused to comment on the disputes. A spokesman said they were sub judice.