From 3pm to 5.30pm CET, Thursday 11 April 2013
Outside Skanska AB Annual Shareholders’ Meeting at Berwhaldhallen, Dag Hammarskjölds väg 3,Östermalm, Stockholm, Sweden.
UK protesters against the construction blacklist are to target the annual general meeting of Swedish construction multinational Skanska. An 11 April demonstration, led by the union GMB and the Blacklist Support Group, aims to enlist support from the company’s shareholders and the Swedish public. Blacklisted workers will hold meetings with Swedish construction unions on 10 April.
The campaigners says despite acknowledging its role as one of the principal blacklisters of UK site workers – the firm told MPs in March it regretted its role in the scandal – Skanska has to date failed to compensate any affected workers.
Speaking ahead of the protest, GMB national officer Justin Bowden said: “Skanska appeared in front of the UK Parliamentary Select Committee into Blacklisting just last month and said how deeply they regretted their ‘inexcusable’ role in the blacklisting of 3,213 construction workers and green activists.
“From 1996/7 to 2008/9 Skanska and its predecessors spent £216,000 with blacklisting body The Consulting Association. This was second only to the £220,000 spent by McAlpine. As it cost £2.50 to check a name, Skanska checked an awful lot of names. However Skanska has refused to pay a single penny in compensation. Indeed they have said that they will fight any legal action against them.”
He added: “GMB is travelling to Stockholm to alert the Swedish people and the shareholders of Skanska of such double standards. GMB wants the managers Skanska employed to be told that the building workers and their families, whose lives they ruined, must be compensated.”