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All those construction companies that used the services of the Consulting Association to blacklist union activists and others considered to be undesirable must now “demonstrate how they have changed”, say the MPs.
Any firms that do not take the appropriate self-flagellatory steps should themselves now be blacklisted, they say, and barred from gaining any publicly funding work.
The report, by the Scottish Affairs Committee, is called Blacklisting in Employment: addressing the crimes of the past; moving towards best practice.
In its summary, it states: “Those who were caught blacklisting in the past should also be excluded unless they undertake a process known as 'self-cleaning'. This would involve various activities, including an admission of guilt, full compensation and other appropriate remedial steps. We believe that the levels of restitution should not be solely for the companies themselves to determine, but must be agreed after negotiations with the relevant trade unions and representatives of blacklisted workers.
“However, simply ending blacklisting is not enough. We were led into our current enquiries as a result of our concern about health and safety in construction and we wish to pursue ways of producing a better industry. We have identified the contracts agreed between trade unions and EDF for the construction of its Hinkley Point C site as being current best practice for the industry and would wish to see the best features of these contracts adopted as standard practice throughout the entirety of the public sector and for all publicly funded projects.”
Ian Davison MP, chair of the committee, said: “Had these companies not been caught, blacklisting would still be happening, and indeed we have heard evidence that it is still going on in some areas. Although blacklisting is illegal now, it is not enough to just end the practice. Reparations must be made, and steps must be taken so that we are pro-actively preventing these practices – and the health and safety problems they lead to – rather than just stopping it when it happens. Companies that are caught blacklisting now, or do not make the proper reparations, or do not apply agreed standards of practice in their contracts, should be “blacklisted” themselves and barred from obtaining any publicly funded work.
“It is impossible to fully quantify the damage that may have been done to people’s careers and livelihoods, and to their families, as well as to health and safety on site, by these practices, but restitution must be made. It must not be left just to the companies themselves to determine what this should be, but it must be agreed after negotiations with the relevant trade unions and representatives of blacklisted workers. It must also be applied to all the victims of blacklisting who have yet to be identified, and where the victim has died, compensation must go to their families.
“We want to pay tribute to both the Welsh Government, who have taken a clear and unequivocal ethical stance on this issue and provided a political lead which many other bodies in the public sector have subsequently followed, and to the activists of the Blacklisting Support Group, who have fought over a long number of years to maintain this issue in the public eye and to seek recognition for the injustices experienced by so many working people.
“The role of governments, UK, devolved and local, is absolutely crucial in encouraging and enforcing best practise and in driving out blacklisting. We will now be writing to the Coalition government , to the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish governments and to local authority associations, urging them to adopt our proposals and to use their financial power to ensure that blacklisting is abolished, direct employment is made mandatory and that health and safety is given ever greater priority.”
In October 2013 eight of the UK’s biggest construction contractors – Balfour Beatty, Carillion, Costain, Kier, Laing O’Rourke, Sir Robert McAlpine, Skanska UK and Vinci – jointly announced the setting up of a Construction Workers Compensation Scheme. They also issued an apology and promised not to set up blacklists again. (See previous report here.)
Negotiations are contining with trade unions about the mechanics of these payments: who gets how much. So far, no one has received anything.
Part of the problem is finding who to give the money to. There were 3,214 names on the Consulting Association’s blacklist but the database was so erratic that tracking them down is proving difficult. As of November 2013, only 467 of them know that they were on it. That month the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), which shut down the Consulting Association in 2008 for data protection breeches and seized its database, wrote to 1200 people on the blacklist informing them that they are on the list and asking them to confirm their details. The ICO has not yet said how many replies it got to those letters.
Meanwhile, next month a court hearing begins into a class action brought by the GMB union on behalf of members blacklisted by construction employers. The question is what will happen first: construction companies making voluntary reparation payments, or being forced to by the courts? If it is the latter, it probably does not count as 'self-cleansing'.
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