blacklisting hearings part deux: legislation delayed

A Parliamentary committee scrutinising new blacklisting legislation has delayed its decision for a week and will look again at the issue. Update: Ucatt has now issued a press release on this which I've pasted in at the end.

The Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments sat yesterday (in private) and decided to sit again next Wednesday before publishing its report. It followed lobbying by unions of committee members pointing out that the draft wording of the new regulations may contravene the Human Rights Act.

The committee's secretary told me:

The Committee considered this instrument yesterday and will return to the subject next week.  A report will be published stating the Committee's decision, usually on the Tuesday after the meeting.

The JCSI only considers the technical aspects of SIs. Briefly, the Committee ensures the SI has been properly legally worded as Parliament has ordered.  We are not allowed to consider the policy behind it or merits (lines 62-64, Standing Order 151). Further clarification about the work of the JCSI and its terms of reference (Standing Order 151) can be found here.

The regulations will still need to be approved by both houses before becoming law.

Meanwhile Mick Dooley's employment tribunal hearing against Balfour Beatty has ended and a judgement due within four weeks. Dooley is claiming unfair dismissal saying he was blacklisted. He had a file held on him by the Consulting Association - the secret vetting agency set up by construction companies. Beatty denies the claim. Update: short report on this from the useful Panopticon blog)

This is the Blacklist Support Group's commentary on the hearing giving their view of the key points:

1. Balfour Beatty used the Consulting Association file as part of their bundle. They relied on it time and again in their evidence arguing that only official TU activity is covered by the legislation. The BB argument was that if they did dismiss Mick, it was because he was a well known trouble maker involved in unofficial wildcat strikes and all the info in his file proved it. And therefore they had a fair reason to dismiss.

 

The judge said he thought the file was"ghastly" and repeatedly asked their barrister whether they were relying on this file which was already considered illegal under the Data Protection Act? BB repeatedly said yes.

 

2. BB accepted that their HR managers attended meetings at the Consulting Association and that they paid a membership subscription fee.

 

3. The judge accepted the need for the Human Rights Act to be taken into account by the tribunal. The only opposition to this point made by Balfour Beatty was that it was out of time.

Mick argued that the file had entries on it in 2001. The judge said that by relying on the file as evidence TODAY as part of the ET process that this meant that the HRA applied to it today.

4. Mick repeated his allegations about the security forces involvement

Judgement is reserved. Judge said should have a result within 4 weeks. Win or Lose it should be very interesting to read the written judgement.

And this is only the first of dozens of such cases scheduled to take place.

Ucatt press release

Construction union UCATT has won a delay in the implementation of blacklisting laws, due to concerns that the current proposals fail to stamp out the practice. The delay in the implementation of the regulations is a significant victory in UCATT’s campaign to win justice for blacklisted construction workers.

UCATT wrote to and directly contacted members of the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments expressing their grave concerns that the current regulations will fail to end blacklisting. When the committee met on Wednesday 20 January to consider the regulations, a decision was made to delay ratifying the regulations for a week, as the committee was concerned that the proposals do not comply with human rights obligations.

Alan Ritchie, General Secretary of UCATT, said: “The pause in the parliamentary process is welcome. Outlawing blacklisting is a fundamental issue for UCATT. The Government now has the opportunity to rethink and redraft regulations which as they stand are entirely inadequate to stamp out blacklisting.”

As they stand the regulations do not make blacklisting a criminal offence, despite a Government promise in 1999 this would be the case. The regulations also only cover blacklisting of workers undertaking the limited definition of “trade union activities” and specifically rules out protecting workers involved in unofficial industrial action, including stoppages due to safety concerns or a refusal to undertake voluntary overtime.

Nor do the regulations provide for automatic compensation to any worker who is found to have been blacklisted and if an illegal blacklist was discovered the affected workers would have no automatic right to be informed of the fact. The regulations also allow for certain circumstances, which would permit companies to legally draw up lists of trade unionists for recruitment practices, which could result in backdoor blacklisting.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights also raised concerns about the weakness of the blacklisting regulations in December 2009. The committee criticised the regulations for being incompatible with the Government’s human rights commitments and that the proposals failed to provide an adequate remedy for workers who had previously been blacklisted.

Mr Ritchie, added: “There is growing disquiet about the weakness of the blacklisting regulations. It is vital that the Government listens to these genuine concerns and acts accordingly.”