Don’t plough your digger into a hotel if you haven’t been paid – there is an alternative

We shouldn’t disregard the anger, upset and depression that can result from not being paid. But the best way of getting what you’re owed is joining a union

“That’s what happens when you don’t pay your wages, mate” is the defining cry of the now viral video of a builder driving a digger into a Travelodge after his employer allegedly failed to pay him £600.

While the response by this worker has surprised many, what potentially instigated it should come as no surprise.

I want to be very clear, the behaviour of this builder was completely appalling and may have put others around him at serious risk of injury. However, I sympathise with what he said had pushed him to this point, and it would be unfair to disregard the anger, upset and depression that can result from not being paid.

I should know, it happened to me.

I’ve been an electrician in large construction projects around London and the south of England for eight years. A week hasn’t passed by when I haven’t seen someone not get paid or get paid less than the full amount they are owed.

If I were to steal from my site, I would probably lose my job and get arrested. Yet for too long contractors and agencies have been able to get away with the wholesale theft of their workers’ wages. Often, workers don’t fight back, as they don’t see the point in paying thousands in solicitors fees to take their employer to court for a few hundred pounds in unpaid wages. They leave the site and go on to the next job, hoping that it won’t happen again.

Last March, when working on the Westfield All Star Lanes project, the agency I worked for ended up owing me £500, much of it docked from my last day’s wages. I realised then that I had to do something, not for the hundreds of pounds I was robbed of on that job, but to stop the cycle of wage theft and abuse in the sector. So, together with a handful of other frustrated electrical workers, I unionised, creating The Independent Workers Union of Great Britain’s (IWGB) Electrical Workers Branch (EWB).

I know that wouldn’t be many people’s first response. After all, most people think that unions are irrelevant, crippled by years of declining membership and draconian anti-trade union laws.

But our experience and that of other precarious workers in the IWGB, many of whom have even less leverage with their bosses than we do, shows that there is still power in a union.

In seven months we have gone from strength to strength. Using social media, Whatsapp and Facebook, we have been able to communicate with our members and resolve their pay and other issues faster than ever.

Just two months ago the union recovered thousands of pounds in unpaid wages for electricians working at Tottenham’s new £800m stadium at White Hart Lane and a number of other sites. Some of these workers had been owed upwards of £2000 after the agency that employed them ceased trading and merged with another entity.

This problem, that in the past might never have been resolved, was taken care of within two weeks, through union and media pressure. Individually these workers stood no chance of being paid, simply because the cost of solicitors and court would cost more than they had lost.

But rather than tearing up the stadium and risking legal consequences, these workers discovered that unity and solidarity is much more powerful than a 4,000lb digger.

Their confidence and that of electrical workers on other sites is growing by the day, with the hope that at some point in the future we will be able to abolish agencies altogether.

So I hope the next video that becomes viral isn’t of a builder crashing a digger into a building, but of a protest or a strike, so I’ll be able to say: “union revenge – that’s what happens when you don’t pay your wages.”

Ricky Howell is a founder and vice-chair of the IWGB EWB