Balfour Beatty ran reference checks with the now-defunct Consulting Association on approximately 15,000 construction workers between 2004 and 2008.
Mr Peasland told the Scottish Affairs select committee, which is investigating the extent of blacklisting in the construction industry, that Balfour Beatty checked the credentials of employees because they feared “harassment and bullying” by some workers, coercing others to walk off site or deliberately work slowly.
Mr Peasland said: “We believe that at the time we were suffering huge amounts of disruption in our business from unlawful acts on our sites and that would have led to major issues in terms of disruption for our customers, for our staff and for our own workforce. We felt that this was a way to prevent unlawful acts on our sites from happening.”
Pressed on what unlawful acts he feared, he added: “We are talking about unofficial action by workers and things like harassment and bullying on sites.” Acts of violence had been experienced on sites, he said.
However, he said that Balfour Beatty now had a code of ethics that says no references are taken without the individual’s knowledge.
He said: “We do regret the use of the Consulting Association. It should not have happened, and we do apologise to all the workers and their families who were affected by this.”
Over the course of his three hours of grilling, Mr Peasland assured MPs that compliance officers were now in place to ensure that his company would not use any other industry blacklists or referencing services.
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