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Union threatens legal action over blacklisting

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The GMB trade union has called on the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) to take proactive action to inform 2,863 builders that they are on a 'blacklist' that the ICO has been in possession of since 2009. They also want to see the 44 companies that blacklisted them prosecuted. GMB has said that they will take legal action if this does not happen. This follows a similar letter from Liberty a few weeks ago (Risks 568). The move follows a long campaign for action that followed the revelation that there was a secret database of 3,500 construction workers which was used by 44 companies to vet new recruits and keep out of employment trade union and health and safety activists. The database, run by the Consulting Association, was seized by the ICA in 2009 but they now claim that builders who think they are on this blacklist should contact its offices. The GMB union insist that this is completely unreasonable and unrealistic and the ICO should apply the same standards as it used in the phone-hacking scandal and contact those on the list. GMB want ICO should use his wide ranging powers to proactively tell the 2,863 workers still unaware that they are on the list. In June GMB published a report on construction company Carillion that showed that blacklisting was not something isolated or rare. The report estimates that in the period from October 1999 to April 2004 Carillion checked at least 14,724 names.

GMB press release

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