Case Studies

Interim blacklisting report

by Mark Rowe

Featured in the April 2013 print issue of Professional Security was the security angle to the scandal of construction companies for decades blacklisting workers. Now the Scottish Affairs Committee has brought out an interim report on the subject.

Paul Kenny, GMB General Secretary, said his union welcomed the interim report, and added ‘we know that there is a lot more investigation to follow’.

“What we see here in the plain light of day are major construction companies involved in shifty, unethical, dishonest practices for which they seem totally unable to apologise and take responsibility. They have yet to compensate a single person they damaged. It is high time they apologised and compensated the 3,213 denied work.

“Less than 10 per cent of those blacklisted know they are on the list. ICO’s failure since 2009 to contact those on the blacklist has been pathetic. GMB found at least five times as many in a fraction of the time with little of the information to go. This ICO performance is woeful and may have delayed claims in the courts for compensation.”

Besides calling the blacklist morally indefensible, the committee said that they will look into it further: whether blacklisting continues; what compensation, how determined and from whom, should be provided to those affected; is the defence for those individuals operating the system, that they were simply following orders, acceptable? and, if so, what of those who gave the orders and those who gained financially as a result;? And are changes in the law required.

Summary

The committee of MPs said that the blacklisting of building workers by big construction companies via the Consulting Association was ‘a real live conspiracy’. They begin their report by defining blacklisting as ‘the practice of systematically denying individuals employment on the basis of information, accurate or not, held in some kind of database’.

“The companies set up a structure which allowed them to submit names and details of workers they deemed to be unsuitable to a central list and to check prospective employees, or the employees of subcontractors on their sites, against this list. The emphasis throughout was on secrecy, with telephone access to sensitive information restricted to only a few, with lists of names submitted destroyed at the end of each working day and no acknowledgement that such a system existed.

“As a result of this process, workers were denied employment without explanation, financial hardship was caused, lives were disrupted and sometimes ruined. There was no right of appeal or challenge to the information held or the decisions made, and those affected, though they may have had their suspicions, had no evidence that they were being discriminated against in such a systematic and methodical way.

The MPs’ report said that they believe that most of the companies involved are genuine in their regret at having been caught— ‘however, we are not convinced that the process would have been halted had it not been detected. We also completely reject the verbal gymnastics of some companies which asserted that, because not everyone on the blacklist was automatically refused employment, the files did not constitute a blacklist. None of these records was compiled in order to assist any of the individuals involved in finding work.’

For the Scottish Affairs Committee report in full visit – http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmscotaf/1071/1071.pdf

The ICO’s Deputy Commissioner David Smith recently defended the ICO by saying that it would be irresponsible and possibly unlawful for the data protection watchdog to write to people on such a sensitive matter at addresses that are likely to be out of date. Visit – http://www.ico.org.uk/news/blog/2013/pilot-project-extended-to-help-identify-blacklisted-workers

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