CONSTRUCTION workers brought traffic to a halt outside a Teesside development site yesterday after bosses undercut nationally agreed pay rates.

Private firms Sita and Semb­corp are joint overall contractors for construction of a £200 million energy-from-waste plant at Wilton, on Teesside, for Merseyside Recycling and Waste Authority.

Construction unions said that the contractors were shipping in overseas labour and undercutting pay rates.

Yesterday’s action was the 22nd weekly Pay the Rate protest at the site — and the activists have vowed to spread the campaign to other sites.

The Teesside Construction Activists Committee has grown from 12 to 400 since the campaign began and is backed by unions Unite, Ucatt, GMB and Teesside People’s Assembly.

Blacklisted local scaffolder and committee member Tony Seaman told the Morning Star: “We blockaded the site’s four gates again.

“Cars were stopping and we were giving drivers leaflets and asking them how they would feel if they were told tomorrow their wages were being cut.”

He stressed that the campaign was against the undercutting of nationally agreed rates of pay, not the employment of overseas workers.

On September 30 Teesside Labour MPs and representatives of the three unions will meet the Merseyside recycling authority and Sita Sembcorp bosses to negotiate.

“If they do not agree to pay the rate we will be upping the ante,” said Mr Seaman.

There are already plans to demonstrate at another Sita site at Billingham in Durham on Wednesday next week, ­September 23.