WE are appalled by what we have discovered during our committee hearings. The Consulting Association was an organised conspiracy by big construction firms, to discriminate against workers who raised legitimate grievances over health and safety and other industrial issues.
This was an exercise run for the financial gain of the companies involved and those who benefited must be held accountable.
We were neither convinced nor impressed by the attitude of the people involved in funding, operating and using this blacklist. The suggestion that this was somehow not a blacklist at all because people were not automatically refused employment if their name was on the list is ludicrous.
Thousands of workers and their family members, had intrusive, private information filed away about them so that they could be systematically discriminated against. Workers were denied employment without explanation, financial hardship was caused, lives were disrupted or ruined.
Some of the actual entries on the blacklist beggar belief: snippets of malicious gossip about workers and their family members masquerading as ‘information’, or simple statements of legitimate union membership expressed as if it was a personal failing.
This is an interim report; our inquiry so far has posed a series of key questions rather than answering them, particularly in regard to whether compensation should be offered to the people who suffered invasion of their privacy and loss of earnings as a result of this blacklist.
• Ian Davidson, chairman of the Scottish Affairs Committee, comments on the interim report into construction blacklisting.
