Blacklist blog

The House of Commons Scottish Affairs Select Committee has heard a two hour evidence session from Blacklist Support Group secretary Dave Smith as part of its ongoing investigation into blacklisting in employment.

As part of his 12 June evidence, Mr Smith revealed a number of elected politicians and at least one MSP had files kept of them by the notorious Consulting Association. Mr Smith was able to make the claim after having been granted a Court Order to view the entire unredacted blacklist as part of his Employment Tribunal this year against the construction giant Carillion.

Mr Smith also for the first time “named and shamed” senior managers and directors of construction firms who had personally taken part in the illegal blacklisting conspiracy. He told MPs:

• Gerry Harvey, director of human resources at Balfour Beatty Engineering Services (BBES, formerly Balfour Kilpatrick), attended The Consulting Association meetings on behalf of both companies.
• Elaine Gallagher, a human resources manager at BBES, was the “main contact” when contacting The Consulting Association.
• Liz Keates, head of human resources at Carillion Health, was a key Carillion contact person with The Consulting Association.
• John Edwards, invoiced at Carillion after attending a meeting of The Consulting Association in May 2008.
• John Bull, head of human resources at Carillion, was the company’s  “Main Contact” with The Consulting Association.
• Alf Lucas, industrial relations manager with John Mowlem Construction PLC (now Carillion (JM) Ltd), was a contact for The Consulting Association.
• David Cochrane, head of human resources with Sir Robert MacAlpine, was a contact person for The Consulting Association.

Dave Smith told the select committee all of these names were backed up with documentary evidence including Employment Tribunal judgments, witness statements and invoices from The Consulting Association.

He told MPs the Blacklist Support Group will ask the Independent Police Complaints Commission to investigate allegations that the police supplied information about them to an industry blacklist.

Firms who were involved in a massive covert blacklisting scheme targeting union and safety activists are facing a three-pronged attack and public exposure.

A report from the union GMB released this week exposes widespread use of the blacklist by construction giant Carillion. It came as the parliamentary committee heard evidence of the extent of the scandal, and MPs were told a complaint of police collusion in the blacklist was to be referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

GMB says its report, published at the union’s congress on 11 June, “pulls back the curtain of secrecy”. The union says its dossier reveals how employers like Carillion have illegally used their power and money to blacklist citizens and to deny them their rights to employment.

The Information Commissioner has confirmed that 224 construction workers from around the UK were victims of blacklisting by Carillion. These names, on the files of the blacklisting body The Consulting Association, were released in the course of an Employment Tribunal earlier this year when Carillion was accused of blacklisting former construction worker Dave Smith.

Blacklisting – illegal corporate bullying endemic, systemic and deep-rooted in Carillion and other companies was released to coincide with a visit to the union’s congress by up to 150 GMB members employed by Carillion at Great Western Hospital in Swindon. GMB said the workers are striking over bullying and harassment and “failure to deal with a cover up, bribery and corruption on this PFI contract.” It says Liz Keates, the senior HR manager investigating allegations at Carillion in Swindon, “was the main manager administering the endemic, systemic and deep rooted blacklisting at Carillion.”

GMB says blacklisting by Carillion was not something isolated or rare. The GMB report estimates that in one financial quarter Carillion checked 2,776 names with The Consulting Association. In the period from October 1999 to April 2004, Carillion checked at least 14,724 names, the report estimates.

Of the 3,213 people on the blacklist, 2,863 are still unaware that their details were held by The Consulting Association, the union warns.

GMB general secretary Paul Kenny said: “This GMB report pulls back the curtain of secrecy to give a glimpse how employers like Carillion have illegally used their power and money to blacklist citizens and to deny them their rights to employment. The report shows that the level of wrong doing and abuse around this blacklisting is the construction industry’s equivalent of phone hacking by newspapers and is equally serious.”

The union leader added: “For far too long, vested interests have sought to ignore these discriminatory activities by Carillion and others. GMB will campaign to expose these activities. GMB will call on politicians to bring social justice to the victims of blacklisting by these companies. Carillion and others should apologise and compensate victims who have fallen foul of their illegal activities.”

Steve Kelly, spokesperson for the Blacklist Support Group, commented: “Blacklisted workers welcome this important report by the GMB which shines a light on the dirty tricks that this multi-national used against workers prepared to stand up for their rights or raise concerns about safety in the building industry. Unfortunately Carillion now seems to be bringing these vile anti-union practices into the NHS and other projects publicly funded.”

He added: “The Blacklist Support Group are proud to have assisted the GMB in the production of this report. We hope that the report will be shared amongst public authorities and in regions where workers have been blacklisted by Carillion, the firm should be removed from any approved contractors list for future publicly funded projects in that area. Labour Councils especially have a role to play in ensuring that their contractors comply with at least basic standards of corporate responsibility; which means not victimising and blacklisting trade union members.”

A tribunal judge has issued a damning verdict on construction giant Carillion’s use of blacklisting – and the weak laws which denied its victims justice. Details of the judgment, which had been reserved from January, reveal stark criticism of Carillion.

Employment judge AM Snelson criticised the lack of legal protection for Dave Smith (above, second from right, with his pro bono legal team), an engineer who took Carillion to an employment tribunal after he discovered his name was on the illegal Consulting Association blacklist.

Carillion admitted that its subsidiaries Carillion (JM) and Schal International Management had used the Consulting Association’s blacklist. It also admitted that its managers supplied damaging and false information to the blacklist about Mr Smith because he had raised concerns about safety when he was an accredited safety rep for builders’ union UCATT.

Mr Smith lost his tribunal case because he was not employed directly but via an employment agency. But Judge Snelson said the tribunal had “reached our conclusion with considerable reluctance.” He added: “It seems to us that he has suffered a genuine injustice and we greatly regret that the law provides him with no remedy. We hope that he can take some comfort from the fact that the wrongdoing of which he complains has been exposed and punished and legislation passed designed to protect others from the misfortunes which he has experienced.”

Following publication this week of the judgment, Dave Smith said: “The written judgment says that I have suffered a great injustice at the hands of big business.” He added: “It is not just me, but thousands of other workers who have suffered a grave injustice. The decision sums up by saying that, as an agency worker, I have no protection under UK law. In that case we need to change the law. That’s why we are going to fight this all the way – we will appeal it to Strasbourg, if necessary.”

An appeal to an Employment Appeal Tribunal is being prepared.

Republican lawmakers have indicated it is more important to let employers police themselves on workplace safety than it is to give workers protection when they blow the whistle on unsafe practices.

In comments to Daily Labor Report last week, Republican Representative John Kline said his party would reject President Obama’s proposed budget for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the official health and safety enforcement agency. He revealed Republicans are particularly opposed to the additional $4.9 million (£3.1m) for worker whistleblower protection and the $3.2 million (£2m) cut in the voluntary employer compliance program that was the hallmark of the Bush administration.

Kline said Democrats wanted “to increase whistleblower opportunities, increase penalties, increase the number of inspectors, increase the number of inspections and pull back from voluntary participation programs. We just have a fundamentally different view of what we think that relationship ought to be between the government and the workforce.”

In a blog posting, the national union federation AFL-CIO responded: “The last time we checked, more inspectors, more inspections, tougher penalties and worker protections were the hallmarks of any effective workplace safety program. There’s plenty of evidence that when given the opportunity, some employers don’t hesitate to cut corners or just downright ignore safety and health laws.”

An AFL-CIO Executive Council statement last week noted: “Some employers, such as Massey Energy and BP, cut corners and flagrantly violate the law, putting workers in serious danger and costing lives.”

The prime minister has said the police should investigate police complicity in the blacklisting of trade union and safety activists. The response came in parliament this week after two Labour MPs had called separately for a public inquiry into revelations from the Information Commissioner’s Office that information held by covert blacklisting outfit The Consulting Association could only have been provided by the police or security services.

Michael Meacher has written to home secretary Theresa May demanding a public inquiry into the construction blacklisting scandal. Trade website Construction Enquirer reports that the former Labour cabinet minister tabled a question in parliament last week “to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if she will set up a public inquiry into recent allegations that (a) the police and (b) the security services supplied information to the Consulting Association leading to the blacklisting of up to 3,200 building workers.”

The call follows revelations during a recent employment tribunal pursued by blacklisted worker Dave Smith. The MP also asked “if she will refer to the Director of Public Prosecutions for investigation and possible prosecution the 44 construction firms listed on the Consulting Association database as having used the services of that organisation to blacklist up to 3,200 building workers.”

Michael Meacher is the second Labour MP, after John McDonnell, to call for a full public inquiry. A 21 March question in the House of Commons from McDonnell on the topic received a response from the prime minister.

The Labour MP said: “When 3,000 people, mostly celebrities, had their telephones hacked, the government set up an inquiry under Leveson. When 3,200 trade unionists have been blacklisted, and many have lost their livelihoods, the Home Secretary simply suggests that they go to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Why is there one route to justice for celebrities, and another for working people?”

David Cameron responded: “There is one law that has to cover everybody in this land, and if there is any accusation of wrongdoing, that is something that the police, who are completely independent of the government, can investigate. That is what should happen.”

It is not that the prime minister is unconcerned about workplace health and safety. With the economy going down the pan, Cameron has designated health and safety his whipping boy.  In a 5 January speech to “small businesses and entrepreneurs” he described it as ‘monster’ he intends to ‘kill off’.  Hazards magazine reported this “topped off a display of ministerial bloodlust that had continued seamlessly from late 2011, with no opportunity to foam dyspeptically about the menace of safety passed over.

“As well as the prime minister, his deputy Nick Clegg, the Chancellor George Osborne and business secretary Vince Cable all joined the parade of very mad men.” George Osborne returned to the theme in his 21 March budget statement. Deregulation of health and safety got top billing in his announcement of “supply-side reform of the economy.”

Rail union RMT has demanded full disclosure of a secret ‘RMT File’ held by blacklisting organisation The Consulting Association. It says to date, the Information Commissioner has only released construction industry files compiled by The Consulting Association. These files, however, include explicit cross references to another ‘RMT File’ which remains unpublished. RMT believes this has been used by employers subscribing to The Consulting Association blacklisting services “to wreck our members working lives in the railway industry.”

RMT general secretary Bob Crow said: “The Information Commissioner’s Office knows that an ‘RMT File’ exists in The Consulting Association records, as it is cross referenced in information from the construction industry files that we have in our possession. It is a scandal that nearly three years after this original information came to light that we have still not received copies of the ‘RMT File.’ Clearly, we have reason to believe that this blacklisting file would have identified RMT activists who will have suffered financial loss from this conspiracy to target known trade union activists purely on the basis of their trade union activity.”

He added the “RMT demands full disclosure and will have no hesitation in pursuing legal action against those involved in this scandal.”

The police or security services supplied information to a blacklist funded by the country’s major construction firms that has kept thousands of people out of work over the past three decades, the Observer has reported.

It says the revelation came from the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which believes records that could only have come from the police or MI5 were included in a vast database of files held on 3,200 victims, most targeted for their trade union and particularly safety activities.

The files were collected by the Consulting Association, a clandestine organisation funded by major names in the construction industry. Evidence of police and security service complicity came at an employment tribunal for one of the victims, Dave Smith (above), a 46-year-old former UCATT safety rep who had a 36-page file against his name and was victimised repeatedly for highlighting safety hazards on sites, including poor welfare facilities and the presence of asbestos.

David Clancy, investigations manager at the ICO and a former police officer, told the central London tribunal adjudicating on Smith’s claims against construction giant Carillion that “there is information on the Consulting Association files that I believe could only be supplied by the police or the security services.”

He told the Observer: “The information was so specific and it contained in effect operational information that wouldn’t have formed anything other than a police record.” The paper reports that the scandal will be thrown open to further public exposure in the coming months as a class action by 100 victims against at least 39 companies is set to be pursued in the high court by Hugh Tomlinson QC.

John McDonnell MP, who first raised the issue of blacklisting a decade ago, wrote to the Home Secretary Theresa May this week, calling on her to make a House of Commons statement on the blacklisting issue. The letter also calls for a public enquiry.

The blacklisting revelations have attracted coverage worldwide. Michelle Chen, writing in US publication In These Times, noted: “For years, they wondered why they kept getting turned down for jobs, even when they seemed well qualified. The workers might have all just chalked it up to bad luck if they hadn’t eventually discovered they were at the centre of an extraordinary conspiracy… As fresh details have recently surfaced in the British media, the scandal has taken on shades of a British crime thriller, a Sunday tabloid and a treatise on the English working class.”

So far, though, the criminals that bankrolled the blacklist and directed the activities of The Consulting Association – a list that includes many of the UK’s major multinational construction firms – have remained above the law.

A secret blacklisting file opened on an academic who researched health and safety following the Piper Alpha oil rig disaster claims the offshore oil industry threatened to cut funding to his university if he “continued to cause problems”.

Investigative journalist Phil Chamberlain, writing in his Taking out  the trash blog, reveals that Professor Charles Woolfson had published extensively on safety regimes in the North Sea while he was industrial relations professor at the University of Glasgow and wrote a well-regarded book, Paying The Piper. However, having his work reported in the media led drew him to the attention of The Consulting Association, which opened a file on him in 1995. The organisation was shut down by the Information Commissioner’s Office in 2009 and its records seized. Ian Kerr, the man paid to run the Association, was later fined £5,000 for breaching data protection laws.

“This is frankly an unwelcome surprise,” Prof Woolfson said in an interview with Chamberlain. “There is a clear intent to do me professional harm. This organisation and the industry obviously felt sufficiently threatened by critical academic research on safety to put me on a blacklist.” Six months after the file was opened on Woolfson, reports: “Funding from oil industry to Glasgow University may be cut if above activities continue, or there may be a reduction in his activities to prevent this happening.”

Jake Molloy from RMT’s offshore branch told Chamberlain “it is appalling that anybody should be targeted because they are talking about health and safety.” But he added: “I am aware of an incident where a journalist from a global journal became aware that a major oil company had contacted his employer and they were considering pulling all their adverts because of what he was writing. This is the nature of the business you are dealing with. The oil and gas industry is renowned for putting pressure on anybody who challenges or questions them.”

The construction giant Carillion has admitted a construction worker was blacklisted because of his trade union activities and efforts to improve site safety, but has escaped responsibility because he was an agency worker. The revelation came during an employment tribunal last week brought against the firm by engineer and former UCATT safety rep Dave Smith. It ruled the construction firm could not be held liable because agency workers do not enjoy the same legal protection as directly employed staff.

Earlier, the tribunal had heard an admission by Carillion (previously John Mowlem), subsidiary Schal International and forerunner Tarmac that the qualified engineer was blacklisted. The tribunal heard that between 1999 and 2004 Mowlem paid £20,444 to the Consulting Association, which ran the blacklist.

The Central London Employment Tribunal found Dave Smith had been blacklisted by the respondents Carillion (JM) Limited and Schal International Limited (a wholly owned subsidiary of Carillion) because he raised concerns about asbestos on building sites and because of his trade union activities, but ruled that because he was an agency worker not directly employed by the respondents, they could not be held liable.

Carillion had accepted that Dave Smith had been blacklisted but denied responsibility, arguing that it bought two subsidiaries after they were involved in the practice, a spokesperson saying the company “does not condone any blacklisting, would not itself tolerate any such behaviour.”

Commenting outside the court, Dave Smith said: “The blacklisting conspiracy is a deliberate breach of human rights by big business. Human rights are supposed to apply to everyone but Carillion and their subsidiaries have got away with systematic abuse of power simply because I was an agency worker. If the British justice system does not protect workers’ rights, then we will be taking our case direct to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.”

A secret blacklist file collated by The Consulting Association was presented to the tribunal as evidence and contained Smith’s photograph, address, National Insurance number, work history, car registration, union credentials and information about his family. There was also pages of information about times when Dave Smith had raised concerns about poor toilet facilities or asbestos on building sites. This information was secretly supplied to the blacklist by managers from major building companies. The blacklist file was covertly shared amongst the 44 largest construction firms in the UK and resulted in periods of unemployment.

Blacklisting had a devastating impact on Dave Smith and his family. “If I ever became the safety rep, literally within one of two days I’d be dismissed,” he told the Mirror.  “My income went from £40,000 to £12,000 when they blacklisted me. I was a qualified engineer in the middle of the biggest building boom and my kids were on milk tokens.” He’s claimed that he was owed £175,000 in lost income from building giant Carillion and subsidiaries after being blacklisted.

The tribunal heard alarming new evidence of official complicity in the operation of the blacklist. Former police officer David Clancy, the Information Commissioner’s Office head of investigations who exposed The Consulting Association’s activities, told the tribunal under oath: “There is information on The Consulting Association files that I believe could only be supplied by the police or the security services.” He also told the court that The Consulting Association held information on elected politicians, journalists, lawyers and academics.

Labour MP John McDonnell is supporting the Blacklist Support Group’s campaign for a probe into the blacklisting scandal. Speaking after the tribunal ruled against Dave Smith, he said: “I am calling upon the government to launch a public inquiry into the full extent and impact on people’s lives of blacklisting. These revelations are truly shocking and warrant a detailed and open, public investigation.”

The Blacklist Support Group says the evidence revealed in court is “almost certain” to become a key element in a larger “class action” style claim being brought to the High Court by 100 blacklisted workers in the next few months.

Blacklisting – latest YouTube video from the Blacklist Support Group.