UNITE launched legal action today on behalf of 27 members who were made redundant following the collapse of Carillion.

They were employed by Carillion on a maintenance contract at GCHQ — the government’s snooping headquarters in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

Their company went into compulsory liquidation in January and the 80-strong workforce was informed by liquidators PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) that they faced redundancy.

The union said the workers were dismissed in February, without consultation, and told to claim their redundancy pay from the government’s redundancy payments office.

Unite assistant general secretary for legal services Howard Beckett said: “Unite is fulfilling its promise of using all avenues including its legal arm to defend our members who are the innocent victims of Carillion’s collapse.

“The complexity of this case, which combines employment law rights and draconian insolvency law requirements, demonstrates why workers need to be part of a union. It would have been simply impossible for individual workers to pursue such a case.

“If our members are successful then once again it is the taxpayers who are going to have to pick up the bill for Carillion’s failings.

"This again underlines that the outsourcing model is broken beyond repair and needs to be scrapped.”

If successful, the workers can each be awarded up to 90 days’ pay, but as Carillion is in liquidation this would be paid by the Insolvency Service in the form of unpaid wages, capped at eight weeks and a maximum weekly amount of £489.