FEATURE Blacklisting
workers’ strike in 1972. He told uniteWORKS, “I don’t think the people who do this kind of thing fully realise the impact it has on people’s lives, their families and their children. Some workers lost their homes. Marriages break up over it.”
Ricky was jailed for 16 months in 1973 for his role in picketing workplaces – now the subject of a campaign against a miscarriage of justice. On his release he found it impossible to find work in the trade.
“People get the impression you don’t want to work. It becomes a stigma. No- one knows how appalling it is unless they’ve been through it,” said Ricky.
Unite member and electrician Paul Tattersfield was blacklisted for being a shop steward and health and safety rep on construction sites on his native Humberside. For years he was forced to travel hundreds of miles to Wales for work.
When Paul heard about the 2009 raid on the Consulting Association, with the help of the union he applied to find out if he was on the data base. He discovered that four companies had blacklisted him.
“I was totally shocked,” he said. “I just couldn’t believe that in a democratic society companies which had signed up to supporting trade unions in their literature could act in such a despicable fashion. It was a hammer blow. I’m not an extreme political activist, I’m just an ordinary working person who believes in trade union values.”
Unite won compensation for Paul at an employment tribunal in Manchester in a case against Balfour Beatty, but because of the inadequacy of the law the money was barely sufficient to ‘keep a house over my head’, as he says. It was a huge strain which resulted in the end of a long term relationship.
Paul, who now works for an agency, believes the victimisation continued last year when he lost out on full time employment while other colleagues were taken on.
Unite is attempting to make the best of existing law. The union is taking victims’ cases like Paul’s to employment tribunals citing blacklisting law and legislation which bans discrimination against union members.
The union has written to thousands of members explaining what they need to do to gain access to their details as unearthed by
the information
commissioner so they can take data protection cases.
The legal department is also seeking counsel’s advice on the possibility of taking a case to the European court of human rights.
Unite is demanding new legislation to criminalise the compilation and use of lists so that those found guilty could go to jail. The union also wants to make it easier for victims to win compensation and to force the 44 guilty companies to contribute to a fund for the workers whose lives have been destroyed.
Named and shamed The 44 guilty firms
Amec Building Ltd Amec Construction Ltd Amec Facilities Ltd Amec Ind Div Amec Process & Energy Ltd Amey Construction – Ex Member B Sunley & Sons – Ex Member Balfour Beatty Balfour Kilpatrick Ballast (Wiltshire) Plc – Ex Member Bam Construction (HBC Construction) Bam Nuttall (Edmund Nuttall Ltd) C B & I Cleveland Bridge UK Ltd Costain UK Ltd Crown House Technologies (Carillion/Tarmac Const) Diamond M & E Services Dudley Bower & Co Ltd – Ex Member Emcor (Drake & Scull) – ‘Ex Ref’ Emcor Rail G Wimpey Ltd – Ex Member Haden Young
16 uniteWORKS March/April 2013 “”
No-one knows how appalling it is unless they’ve been through it
Ricky Tomlinson Blacklisting target
As we go to press the Scottish affairs select committee has been told that Stephen Quant, former director of industrial relations at Skanska, was a major contributor to the list. Unite believes he blacklisted almost every Jubilee Line project electrician. In the final years of the CA’s existence Skanska made 66,000 blacklisting checks.
Kier Ltd John Mowlem Ltd -Ex Member Laing O’Rourke (Laing Ltd) Lovell Construction (UK) Ltd – Ex Member Miller Construction Limited – Ex Member Morgan Ashurst Morgan Est Morrison Construction Group – Ex Member N G Bailey Shepherd Engineering Services Sias Building Services Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd Skanska (Kaverna/Trafalgar House Plc) SPIE (Matthew Hall) – Ex Member Taylor Woodrow Construction Ltd – Ex Member Turriff Construction Ltd – Ex Member Tysons Contractors – Ex Member Walter Llewellyn & Sons Ltd – Ex Member Whessoe Oil & Gas Willmott Dixon – Ex Member Vinci PLC (Norwest Holst Group).
Mark Thomas
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36