Mayor Lutfur Rahman said: “I am proud to say that not only does Tower Hamlets not have any contracts with the companies accused of this practice, but that on my watch it never will.”
The construction trades unions are campaigning for all public authorities to withhold work from the contractors unless they “purge their guilt”. They welcomed Tower Hamlet’s move, which follows a similar statement of intent form the Welsh government last week.
GMB general secretary Paul Kenny said: "GMB is delighted that councillors in Tower Hamlets unanimously voted last night to be the first council in Britain to run the blacklisters right out of town. Where Tower Hamlets councillors have led, others will now surely follow and those companies guilty of blacklisting workers will get no more of the public contracts they crave until they own up, clean up and pay up for what they did to their 3,213 victims.”
With Carillion now expelled from the next week’s Labour Party conference (see earlier report here) GMB has taken its exhibition stand space to campaign against blacklisting in construction and to advise local councillors on how to ban the tainted firms form public works.
The GMB has compiled a list of 29 other authorities that it believes are ready to follow Tower Hamlets in blacklisting the blacklisters.
They are:
- Preston
- Knowsley
- Liverpool
- Hull
- Newham
- Portsmouth
- Southampton
- Rother
- Medway
- Torfaen
- St. Helens
- Midlothian
- Lambeth
- Rochdale
- Birmingham
- Islington
- Manchester
- Sheffield
- Barking & Dagenham
- Milton Keynes
- Plymouth
- Dumfries & Galloway
- West Lothian
- West Dunbartonshire
- East Ayrshire
- Inverclyde
- Greater London Assembly
- Northern Ireland Assembly
- Bristol City Council
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