CONSTRUCTION workers in areas hard-hit by job losses are having their wages undercut by companies using "deliberate subterfuge" a North-East MP told the Commons.

Labour MP Tom Blenkinsop said workers helping to build power plants producing less than 50 megawatts in places like Teesside were being undercut by "unscrupulous companies" using migrant workers on as little as £7 an hour.

Those workers at solid biomass and combined heat and power plants were not being guaranteed national, industry-agreed terms and conditions, of between £16 and £64 an hour, depending on skill.

Mr Blenkinsop said this was leading to frustration, unrest and mass protests in areas like Teesside, which has seen heavy job losses in both steel and other industries.

The Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland MP said there was a "race to the bottom" on wages, with the undercutting of the Engineering Construction Industry (NAECI) terms and conditions for construction workers.

He told the Commons: "Both civil and engineering construction is a lifestyle choice demanding commitment, loyalty and hard graft, where workers more often than not work long hours under arduous or sometimes dangerous conditions to produce the end product.

"However all those great virtues count for nothing when the dice are loaded against you.

"From Teesside to South Yorkshire, Scotland to Wales, a recent epidemic of deliberate subterfuge is being used to avoid and evade industry standards for terms and conditions of construction workers in the power generation sector."

They used "opaque contractual agreements" via umbrella companies which were seeing workers paying their own national insurance twice.

Moving his Town and Country Planning (Electricity Generating Consent) Bill under a Ten Minute Rule motion, Mr Blenkinsop called for collective agreements for all power plants.

"Without blanket collective bargaining for workers, firms will use caveats to exploit," he said.

"A support of collective bargaining and a support of collectively bargained nationally agreed terms is the only solution to prevent exploitation of immigrant labour and the real tangible means by which we as a nation can prevent the deliberate social discord created amongst our own communities by the means of effectively excluding workers from our own towns from seeking and achieving meaningful employment."

The Bill has the support of Labour MPs and its second reading was scheduled for May 13.

But it is unlikely to make progress due to a lack of parliamentary time.

Mr Blenkinsop said many workers had lobbied Teesside MPs on the matter.

A heated, long-running union protest at both Wilton and Haverton Hill against companies using migrant labour on cheaper wages ran through most of last year.