MashGet

Trade union leaders tonight threatened to ballot their members on industrial action unless employers stopped hiring foreign workers at cut-price wages in breach of national agreements.

Paul Kenny, general secretary of the GMB union, said he would demand a commitment that unions be allowed to "audit" workers at sites at a meeting with engineering and construction industry employers next Wednesday.

The union chief was speaking following the latest in a series of labour disputes where Polish and other European Union nationals have been brought in, most recently at the South Hook liquefied natural gas terminal in south Wales.