Blacklisting regulations slammed by UCATT

The long-anticipated blacklisting regulations have gone through parliament. But construction union UCATT, whose members were worst hit by the Ian Kerr blacklisting scandal last year, said it was “bitterly disappointed” that the government had failed to address its concerns.

The union, backed by lawyers, said the regulations fail to even make blacklisting unlawful and almost condone blacklisting of workers who undertake unofficial industrial action.

And Keith Ewing, professor of public law at King’s College London, said the regulations’ worst aspect was their failure to provide for compensation for victims of blacklisting, who will have to pursue a claim in the European Court Of Human Rights.

Writing in The Guardian newspaper, Ewing pointed out that when Margaret Thatcher took office in 1979, she was faced with a group of workers who had been fired in the 1970s for non-membership of a trade union, deemed fair at the time before the closed shop was effectively banned. So the Tories introduced a scheme to compensate such workers retrospectively.

Ewing wrote: “If the Tories can compensate at public expense workers who suffered loss because of their non-membership of a trade union, then surely a Labour government could have done the same on behalf of workers whose lives have been blighted because of their membership of a trade union, and participation in its activities.”