CONSTRUCTION-industry campaigners have released a damning dossier revealing how workers are being forced to continue in their jobs during the coronavirus crisis.

The document, from the Blacklist Support Group, accuses construction companies of riding roughshod over workers’ rights and the law to keep sites in operation.

It argues that bosses are accelerating the spread of the disease by continuing work on non-essential construction sites.

“The vast majority of construction workers are decent, hardworking people,” the group said on Wednesday night: “

"None of them want to put their own or their family members’ lives at risk by working in a situation where coronavirus infection is likely.

“Yet despite the apparent lockdown, photographs of packed building sites have been all over the media.

“When construction workers go to work, they share minibuses, travel on packed tubes, eat in crowded canteens, go up in full hoists, use palm-print entry systems and live in barrack-style accommodation.

“Construction is a dirty, dangerous place at the best of times with notoriously poor welfare facilities, where the very process requires people to work in close proximity.

"Coronavirus will spread like wildfire in these circumstances.

“Blame for this giant threat to public health lies with the greedy major contractors and clients continuing to enforce penalty clauses for delays, forcing building workers to come into work.

“Blame also lies with the government for not ordering all non-essential construction work to close."

The group said it has received widespread reports of construction workers being sacked if they complain.

One trade publication reported workers being told: “Fuck off if you don’t like it.”

The Blacklist Support Group is calling for the closure of all non-essential construction sites, backing the Shut The Sites campaign, and a guarantee that laid-off workers are paid.