Foreign construction workers building the A2 motorway tunnel in Maastricht have still not been paid back any of the money wrongly subtracted from their wages, the FNV building union said on Thursday.

This month the 70 or so Portuguese labourers working for sub-contractor Rimec were again paid wages which were ‘far too low’, the unions said.

‘They are still working structural overtime but you can’t see this in their pay slips,’ a spokesman said. ‘Workers who are doing 60 hours a week now get a ‘performance supplement’ but this bears no relationship to the hours they are working.’

Deductions

In addition, the foreign nationals are still having €1,000 deducted from their wages for accommodation and transport, even though a report by the A2 steering group last month concluded this was wrong.

The main contractors Ballast Nedam and Strukton said at the time they would pay back all the wrongly-deducted money. So far this has not happened, the union said.

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