The government urgently needs to get a grip on one of the most serious breaches of human rights in Britain since the Second World War, says Unite general secretary Len McCluskey.


Len is demanding an independent inquiry into the blacklisting and covert surveillance of thousands of construction workers.


“This is a scandal on the scale of phone hacking, except it is the lives of thousands of ordinary construction workers which have been ruined.” If the government thought it necessary to set up the Leveson inquiry into Murdoch newspapers, they will surely see the need to do the same for blacklisting, says Len.


“Construction companies have been allowed to get away with a conspiracy to spy on thousands of ordinary construction workers and destroy their careers.


“Lives have been ruined and families have been torn apart just because workers have raised safety concerns in Britain’s most dangerous industry or just because they exercised their human rights to belong to a trade union.” He said the construction industry effectively had their own ‘Stasi-style’ secret police which was operated by the sinister Consulting Association (CA) and other organisations.


Pressure from Len and other union leaders has started to bear fruit. In February the Metropolitan Police decided to investigate police involvement – reversing an earlier decision. The


independent police


complaints commission announced it would supervise the review.


The secret surveillance network


operated by the Consulting Association covered a breathtaking range of construction sites. Workers were even blacklisted for the construction of the Olympics complex and the £16bn Crossrail project.


Funded by 44 of Britain’s biggest construction companies, the association is also known to have compiled data on union members applying for jobs on other


major projects including London’s Jubilee Line, Wembley stadium, the Millennium Dome, Portcullis House, the Admiralty, the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall and GCHQ. Hospital and airport construction projects were also involved.


MPs have heard evidence that not only were CA staff and police officers involved, but secret service agents. Regrettably rogue trade unionists were among those who helped employers spy on workers.


Even the movements of union members outside the workplace were monitored. Information was provided about their private lives and the families of workers on the list were denied employment.


Inevitably those responsible were incompetent as well as malevolent. The late Dundee writer Syd Scroggie found himself on a blacklist because he wrote to the press congratulating Dundee council for awarding the freedom of the city to Nelson Mandela. Syd had lost his sight and his legs while serving in the armed forces.


Proof It was known for years that union members had been blacklisted, but there was no proof until the information commissioner’s office (ICO) raided the association in 2009 following a tip-off.


The commissioner’s staff found more than 3200 individuals’ details on a card index system. Most were involved in the construction industry – and members of Unite, Ucatt and the GMB – but some were environment activists.


The association’s chief officer Ian Kerr was subsequently fined just £5,000 for breaking data protection laws. Blacklisting is not a criminal offence and companies which used the service went unpunished.


Last December the Commons’ Scottish affairs committee was told that Kerr’s fine and legal fees were paid by the construction company Sir Robert McAlpine. A company official told Kerr to put the money into his daughter’s


15 uniteWORKS March/April 2013


bank account so it could be hidden. McAlpine also funded redundancy payments to staff at the association when it was wound up, but it continues to deny it was involved in blacklisting.


Kerr, who died a fortnight after giving evidence, said he believed lists were still kept and that at least one other clandestine organisation was involved. It is feared that other industries might be involved.


In 2010 the Labour government introduced regulations aimed at dealing with the problem, but Unite assistant general


secretary Gail Cartmail described them as ‘pitifully inadequate’.


“The vast majority of workers still don’t know if they’re blacklisted although we’ve done our best to publicise it,” said Gail. “It’s a scandal that the information commissioner’s office hasn’t felt able to write to people on the list,” she said. The ICO is refusing to give Unite more data so it can be cross-referred with membership lists.


Whenever the issue has emerged at employment tribunals, all 44 firms deny using such intelligence. “It is an industry in denial,” says Gail.


In a Commons debate in January shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna condemned blacklisting as ‘national scandal’ and conceded that the law was inadequate.


Unite member Tom Watson MP, a former AEEU official, is calling for far tougher legislation. “It’s disgraceful there are construction workers who went without good jobs for years on the basis of incorrect information held secretly on an illegal database. It is deeply concerning that it is still the case.”


Even the Tory-led government has said that it is unacceptable but predictably has stopped short of action which would redress the injustice.


Royle Family star Ricky Tomlinson was a victim of blacklisting, after he took part in a national building


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