The campaign for justice for blacklisted workers

The Blacklist Support Group (BSG) and trade unions have continued to campaign for justice for blacklisted workers and action to prevent further blacklisting on legal, political and industrial fronts.

The TUC, along with the GMB, UCATT and Unite unions, and the BSG, is calling for a the construction industry to “Own Up, Clean Up, Pay Up!”. They say the companies involved need to:

• Own Up and accept responsibility for what they have done in the past,

• Clean Up and ensure that it does not happen again by having transparent recruitment procedures that are agreed with trade unions and properly monitored; and

• Pay Up and compensate all those who have suffered as a result of their actions.

Recent developments in the campaign for justice for blacklisted workers include the following:

In March 2015, the Scottish Affairs Committee published its final report into blacklisting in employment.

The report criticised the Construction Workers Compensation Scheme (launched by eight of the 30 companies involved in blacklisting) as an “act of bad faith”, not least because it was launched without the agreement of the trade unions and its launch attempted to mask that fact. It also offered low levels of compensation, those participating in ongoing High Court litigation (see below) are not eligible to access the scheme and it failed to incorporate any positive action to upskill and re-employ the victims of blacklisting.

The Committee called for a statutory Code of Practice to eradicate the practice of blacklisting. Its chair, the then Labour MP Ian Davidson, said that many questions about the practice of blacklisting remain unanswered, including recent allegations in relation to police and security service involvement in blacklisting in the construction and other sectors.

The report is available at: www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201415/cmselect/cmscotaf/272/27202.htm

Hundreds of blacklisted workers, backed by general unions Unite and GMB, construction union UCATT and the BSG, are taking action against 40 major construction firms who used the Consulting Association in the High Court. The full trial is set to take place from May 2016 and will last 10 weeks. (www.hazards.org/blacklistblog/2015/05/18/high-court-hears-blacklist-firms-destroyed-evidence).

The BSG has applied for “core participant status” in the Pitchford Inquiry into the failure of undercover policing, while continuing to campaign for a public inquiry into blacklisting.

Further developments in the campaign can be found on the BSG blog at: www.hazards.org/blacklistblog.

The Information Commissioner’s Office has set up a web page for those concerned that they might be on the blacklist: http://ico.org.uk/for_the_public/topic_specific_guides/construction_blacklist