A group of blacklisted workers in the UK has launched a High Court claim against construction giant Sir Robert McAlpine which could potentially be worth £600 million.
Guney Clark & Ryan solicitors served a claim on behalf of 86 claimants for ‘Tort of unlawful conspiracy’ at the High Court last week.
The claimants are part of the Blacklist Support Group (BSG), a network campaigning on behalf of construction workers illegally blacklisted because of their trade union activities by major building contractors as part of The Consulting Association scandal first exposed in 2009.
An Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) investigation in 2009 found that Ian Kerr of Droitwich, on behalf of The Consulting Association, held details of 3,213 construction workers and traded their personal details for profit.
Construction workers last month said they would ask the Independent Police Complaints Commission to investigate allegations that the police supplied information about them to an industry blacklist.
The files included information about relationships between construction workers, including the types of cars they drove, identifying facial features, religions and alleged union activity.
Sean Curran, a director of Guney, Clark & Ryan, said a team from the firm would travel to the ICO office this week to assess the scale of the evidence they need to sift through, after it won a court order for disclosure of previously redacted material.
The claim targets Sir Robert McAlpine as the company with the worst record of blacklisting.
The last invoice issued to the firm by The Consulting Association was in excess of £28,000 for the use of the blacklisting service.
However, the conspiracy charge means Sir Robert McAlpine would also be responsible for the actions of the 40 plus contractors such as Carillion, Balfour Beatty, Skanska who systematically blacklisted workers simply for being members of a trade union.
Many of the claimants were dismissed repeatedly from major construction projects and in some cases suffered years of unemployment because of their union activities or for raising concerns about safety on building sites.
It is believed that the larger claims are in the region of £300,000 for loss of earnings and hurt to feelings.
The minimum award under the new blacklisting regulation introduced in 2010 is £5,000 (but the regulations do not retrospectively cover The Consulting Association victims).
The average claim has been estimated at £20,000, which values the current cases in excess of £17million.
As this is the first wave of claimants, out of a possible 3,200 blacklisted workers, the total payouts the building firms could face exceeds £600 million.
The blacklisted workers are being represented in the High Court by Sir Hugh Tomlinson QC, barrister to the stars in the News of the World phone hacking cases.
Mick Abbott, a 74-year-old ex-scaffolder, commented: ‘This nearly ruined my marriage and it meant that my children were on free meals at school.
‘My file goes back to 1964 and the last entry says that I rekindled the campaign for justice for the Shrewsbury picketers in 2006.
‘They have been watching me all these years and passing this information around, blighting my life over four decades.”
Steve Kelly, an electrician and spokesperson for the Blacklist Support Group said: ‘I was blacklisted because I was a union member and because I raised issues about safety.
‘In 2007, McAlpine sacked me from the Colchester Barracks project after two days for refusing to work on a moving platform without proper training (exactly as we had been instructed in the site induction) – the dismissal is recorded on my blacklist file.
‘Over the year I suffered severe financial strain, my wages were cut in half which caused immense stress paying bills and putting food on table.
‘I was out of work for a year apart from few weeks here and there in 2001.
‘Being sacked from Colchester Barracks after only two days piled up the stress and caused a nervous breakdown for me eventually.
‘The blacklisting firms should be made to pay compensation for years lost and years in future.
‘They should be made to employ blacklisted workers or not be awarded any public government backed contracts.
‘An apology in national press and to individuals whose lives they ruined would be a start.’
Meanwhile, a TUC survey has revealed that despite laws which say employers must give their staff personal protective equipment (PPE) free of charge, more than one in five workers are being forced to pay for it out of their own pocket.
PPE includes protective clothing, helmets and goggles designed to protect workers from injury, electrical hazards, heat, chemicals, and infection.
More than one in 10 (11.6 per cent) of those who responded to the TUC questionnaire said that although their work required them to wear safety equipment of some kind, their employer failed to provide or pay for this.
A further 8.9 per cent were made to pay for any replacement equipment if their original PPE was damaged.
In total more than one in five (20 per cent) of respondents to the survey said that they had to pay for providing or replacing all or some of the equipment they needed for their work.
Women workers were even less likely than men to have their safety equipment provided, with more than 15 per cent having to provide all or some of their own attire – usually foot protection or overalls – compared to 10.5 per cent of men.
The TUC was shocked to find that even where the employer provided PPE, the worker usually had to clean the equipment themselves or pay for it to be cleaned.
Of those whose equipment needed cleaning, more than three in five (60 per cent) claimed that their employer made no arrangements for providing, or paying the cost of, cleaning.
It is illegal for an employer to charge for any safety equipment.
The law also says that every employer has to ensure that any PPE provided to their employees is maintained (including replaced or cleaned as appropriate) in an efficient state, in efficient working order and in good repair.
TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said ‘The fact that so many employers are flouting the law is an absolute scandal.
‘Far too many workers are being forced to provide their own safety protection, whether footwear, boiler suits, overalls or gloves, and this abuse is widespread across a wide range of industries ranging from construction to catering.
‘Even when equipment is provided it is often expected that the worker cleans it or replaces it if damaged.
‘Safety equipment is needed to ensure that workers are protected from injury or disease, yet there appears to be very little enforcement of the law.
‘As a result many workers – often those in low-paid service jobs like catering and cleaning – are having to fork out from their own pocket, or go without.
‘This must stop. With the governments cutback of proactive inspections in the workplace this abuse can only grow.’
TUC survey details:
2,684 people responded to an online TUC questionnaire between March and June 2012. Of these 2,502 were users of PPE.
The most common forms of protection used by those who responded to the survey were footwear (84 per cent), gloves (72 per cent) and overalls or aprons (50 per cent).
The Health and Safety Executive defines PPE as ‘all equipment (including clothing affording protection against the weather) which is intended to be worn or held by a person at work and which protects against one or more risks to their health or safety e.g. safety helmets, gloves, eye protection, high-visibility clothing, safety footwear and safety harnesses.’
All PPE required to protect a worker must be provided free of charge by employers.
PPE should be a last resort but often is not.
Wherever possible, prevention, engineering controls or safe systems of work that could eliminate the hazard, and so the employment of PPE, should be used instead.