Do the right thing by the Hackney apprentices

Bryan Kennedy, Unite union lay rep and Hackney Left Unity member, asks for support for apprentices unfairly made redundant.

Sixteen construction apprentices at the Building Lives Academy have been told they are being made redundant due to a cut in funding.

After careful examination in what has been a highly ‘irregular’ redundancy process, we have uncovered that their actual employer was a large construction company, Lakehouse plc, which has just floated on the stock exchange. The company tried to hide this so that they wouldn’t have to pay redundancy or redeploy the workers, but have now been forced to admit that they are the employer.

During the redundancy process we also caught them trying to present us with falsified job vacancy lists. As the Hackney Citizen article says, Building Lives Academy went cap in hand around all the large construction companies to raise £400,000 to save jobs, and was successful – but they have used it to save management jobs.

We have them on the back foot: we’ve got them to agree a substantial settlement for earlier apprentices not receiving adequate training. The construction industry charity that raised the £400,000 for Lakehouse / Building Lives is also now considering withholding some of the money if they don’t sort the apprentices out.

Please help

Send a Twitter message to:
Lakehouse PLC @Lakehouseplc
Building Lives Academy @BuildinglivesCI
Lighthouse Construction Charity @LighthouseClub1
Tell them to do the right thing by the Hackney apprentices!
Use the hashtag #lovelives and link to the article: http://hackneycitizen.co.uk/2015/06/25/hackney-building-lives-apprentices-lose-jobs-amid-funding-chaos/