Union UCATT has called for action to be taken over the intimidation of workers outside several Crossrail construction depots in London.

The organisation has staged protests outside the Fisher Street tunnelling depot of the £14.8 billion infrastructure project due to various issues such as non-payment of workers and poor facilities.

However, the union is claiming workers and officials were videoed by members of Crossrail/Costain staff, as well as being harassed and threatened by security guards and a lorry driver outside the Crossrail Plumstead depot.

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UCATT has now written to the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, as well as the Government's Information Commissioner, to protest at the actions being undertaken by the project's staff.

Jerry Swain, UCATT Regional Secretary for London and the South East, said: "Crossrail is a huge, high-profile, public-funded infrastructure project in one of the great cities of the world. It should be a flagship construction project for London and the UK. Instead we've got nefarious surveillance akin to the Cold War, physical intimidation reminiscent of an authoritarian state and the working conditions of a banana republic.

"We're calling on both the ICO and the Mayor to step in and straighten out both Crossrail and the construction consortium Costain/ATC, as their behaviour is illegal, intimidatory, anti-social, and quite honesty an embarrassment."

(Demonstration by UCATT outside the Crossrail tunnel entrance on Thursday, 29 September)

(LM/MH)