Turkish workers at Gama Construction staged a further protest against the company yesterday, accusing it of "starving them into submission" in their dispute over pay and conditions.
The claim was denied by the company, which defended its decision to remove a number of workers from its payroll and to ask them to vacate their accommodation.
Between 200 and 300 workers marched yesterday from a company site at Ballymun, Dublin, to its headquarters in Santry to highlight their concerns.
A statement issued by Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins, in the name of the Turkish Workers' Action Group, said Gama had moved "vindictively" to sack more than 300 employees engaged in a work stoppage for the past three weeks.
It said the company had stopped providing food to workers at its Ballymun site who were taking part in the stoppage and, "disgracefully", was threatening to evict them.
Leaders of unions at the company met yesterday and decided to seek meetings with Minister for Employment Micheál Martin and Minister for Social Affairs Seamus Brennan to seek State support for the workers concerned.
Gama has denied threatening evictions, but says about 230 workers are being taken off its payroll and asked to leave their accommodation.
These include 130 employees whose work permits have expired and whom the company wants to transfer to Turkey and elsewhere to take up other jobs. The remaining 100 are employees who are refusing to work, despite the availability of jobs for them in Ireland, it says.
All 230 had jobs "to return to in either Ireland or Turkey and are refusing to do so," the company said in a statement. "They can return to work and resume their employment at any time but have refused to do so."
Yesterday's protest is the latest in a series of events that began in February when Mr Higgins accused Gama in the Dáil of exploiting its Turkish workers.
Gama is a major international construction company, with headquarters in Turkey, which employs about 800 Turkish workers in Ireland, as well as a smaller number of Irish employees.
Mr Higgins's claims led to an investigation by the labour inspectorate at the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, which has been completed.
On Friday the High Court granted the company a continuing injunction preventing Mr Martin from publishing the inspectors' report.
However, the court allowed the department to circulate the report to a range of regulatory bodies including the Garda fraud squad, the Revenue Commissioners and the director of corporate enforcement.
In a speech last night, Labour leader Pat Rabbitte claimed there had been "disgraceful exploitation" at Gama and this had been "no accident".
It was, he alleged, the direct consequence of a culture within the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment which had promoted the use of "cheap, immigrant labour to fuel economic growth".
