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Law firm Leigh Day is preparing to bring a class action against construction firms that used the blacklist and sponsored its organiser, the Consulting Association.
The Consulting Association was managed by Ian Kerr, who shortly before his death last month gave testimony that Sir Robert McAlpine was the prime mover behind the blacklist and that its director Cullum McAlpine was the founding chairman of the organisation.
The Consulting Association was subsequently chaired by David Cochrane, when he was head of human resources at Sir Robert McAlpine.
Mr Kerr ran the Consulting Association from 1993 until 2009 when it was shut down by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). He revealed that McAlpine paid his £5,000 fine for data protection breaches.
Skanska, Kier, Tarmac/Carillion, Mowlem and Trafalgar House were among the 44 companies that subscribed to the service.
Mr Kerr gave evidence to the House of Commons Scottish Affairs committee in November 2012. He said under oath that blacklisting had been conducted on London Olympics construction projects by Balfour Beatty, Sir Robert McAlpine and ‘possibly’ Skanska.
Balfour Beatty subsequently admitted using the blacklist as recently as 2008 to check its workforce for the Games. Balfour Beatty built the Aquatics Centre on the Olympic Park.
The motive for the contractors was to avoid employing known trouble-makers on their sites who could jeopardise the job. Often simply drawing attention to safety issues was enough to be considered a trouble-maker. As the blacklist was entirely subjective, any worker whose face simply did not fit may have found themselves on the blacklist and thus unemployable across the industry.
Cullum McAlpine is scheduled to give his version of events to the Scottish Affairs committee this afternoon.
Tomorrow the Commons will hold a debate on the issue, called by the Opposition. Shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna has called the blacklisting saga ‘a national scandal’.
He said: “Workers have had their livelihoods destroyed, their reputations tarnished and in some cases their families torn apart just because they raised health and safety concerns or were a member of a trade union. And the further tragedy is that many of those affected have no idea that they have been blacklisted.
“As well as investigating blacklisting allegations in full, including those relating to public construction projects, ministers need to look again at what changes need to be made to ensure blacklisting is prevented and that this scandal is never repeated again.”
Construction union GMB, which has found close to 200 members on the blacklist, welcomed the debate but said that it was being let down by a lack of support from the ICO.
Leigh Day who is preparing litigation to get GMB members compensation but is not getting any cooperation from the ICO, the union said.
After the ICO seized the database in 2009, it never contacted anyone on the list to let them know they were blacklisted. By autumn 2012 only 194 of the 3,213 people on the blacklist knew three years later that they were on the list as they had contacted the ICO directly.
ICO finally agreed to help GMB check against its own membership records to find members on the blacklist, but is now failing to cooperate with it lawyers, GMB said.
The Labour Party said that Mr Umunna will use tomorrow’s debate to call for the Information Commissioner to help identify individual victims of blacklisting so that they can seek compensation.
GMB national officer Justin Bowden said “People were deprived of an honest living by these illegal tactics which blighted their families’ lives. They have been the victims of injustice over many years by multi-national companies which now seek to live off public sector contracts. GMB welcome this move by the Labour front bench to try and force the ICO to write to those blacklisted so that they can seek compensation. The ICO should have done this more than three years ago.
“By being obstructive and unhelpful the ICO continue to place obstacles in the way of GMB representing our members to get them justice and compensation.”
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