Blacklists and wage theft: proving what the bosses hid

Hi everyone, 

Proof’s a funny thing. You can know something is happening – lots of people can know it’s happening in fact – and there may even be some evidence it’s happening. But you’ve got to get the whole story to make it bulletproof.  

An investigation can often feel like one of those grand experiments they run through supercolliders, trying to prove the existence of some bizarre particle. The boffins can’t capture it on camera; instead it shows up as a weird blip on normal data, or through the effects it has on everything else. Investigations are similar. After all, like the Higgs Boson, wrongdoing is often sneaky and invisible to the naked eye.  

When Phil Chamberlain started looking into construction worker blacklists, the effects were obvious. Talented workers were being refused jobs. Union organisers put him in touch with people whose expertise would have made them valued members of any workforce – and yet they were losing jobs.

People had long suspected that such “blacklists” existed. Through them, went the rumour, companies were getting information on trade union members, activists or health and safety reps to make recruitment or management decisions. 

A lawyer told Phil early on: “I'm absolutely convinced there are blacklists but the problem is proving it.” At the same time, the British government and construction industry representatives refused to acknowledge that they existed. 

So Phil decided to take up the mantle. He told me the stories he heard from workers fit a pattern. They had all been involved in things like flagging health and safety concerns or making complaints about non-payment of wages. 

They were raising legitimate workplace issues, but the difficulties they encountered afterwards led them to ask if they were being earmarked as troublemakers. A manager had even testified at an employment tribunal that blacklisting was taking place. 

In isolation, these separate pieces of evidence were being ignored. “People don't pay attention to things like that,” said Phil. “It doesn't get sort of shared beyond a small group.” 

In what was to become the start of years of reporting, Phil pulled these strands together. His story was eventually published in the Guardian. It was then that the Information Commissioner's Office called. 

The ICO is the UK authority that upholds information rights. A secret blacklist that breached privacy laws was right in its wheelhouse, and pretty soon investigators were knocking on an unmarked green door down an alley in Droitwich, West Midlands. 

Behind that door, the investigators found a shabby two-room office filled with files containing names, addresses, National Insurance numbers, comments by managers and newspaper clippings.

This unassuming space was the headquarters of the Consulting Association, a shady operation which for 16 years compiled a secret database on thousands of construction workers. Run by a single man, Ian Kerr, the organisation acted as a covert vetting service funded by the industry. 

When people applied for work on building sites, senior employees at Carillion, Balfour Beatty, Skanska, Kier, Costain, McAlpine and more than 30 other companies would fax their names to the Consulting Association, where Kerr would check his files to see if they matched. The files included phrases such as “will cause trouble, strong TU [trade union]”, “ex-shop steward, definite problems” and “Irish ex-army, bad egg”. Union membership appeared to be the overwhelming criteria for being included. 

The scale and impact of the operation unravelled over the years that followed (so much so you could write a book on it, which Phil has done, in fact!). In that time, Phil remained on the story. 

He’s quick to point out to me that he wasn’t alone. Other people like Rob Evans and Dave Smith kept digging too, putting out stories that kept the issue in the spotlight. Dave, originally an engineer, was actually one of the blacklisted workers and had a file running to more than 30 pages. He also helped set up the Blacklist Support Group and was co-author with Phil on his book Blacklisted.

Among other things, they revealed state collusion and links to the spy cops scandal. Prestigious public infrastructure programmes such as the Olympics and Crossrail were implicated. “This isn’t just corporates being out of control,” says Phil. “Some of those corporates were very much in control and working in collaboration with state actors as well.” 

The repercussions are clear. A law to make blacklisting illegal that was originally tabled in the 1990s was enacted in 2010. A £75m settlement with major construction firms brought nearly 800 workers compensation, secured by the union Unite (drawing upon evidence included in Dave and Phil’s book). Dave had his case heard by the European Court of Human Rights (although it ruled against him). 

“It’s rippled across a lot of different areas,” Phil told me, while also acknowledging that he and others would have liked to have seen more action. Some people criticise the current blacklisting law as being weak. Not one company officer lost their job or was put in court. And whistleblowers continue to find themselves sacked and shunned after exposing wrongdoing.

Still, there is hope. Unions continue to pursue the legal route and the new Labour government has put tackling blacklisting on its agenda. Inquiries also continue: an internal one at Unite into possible collusion with blacklisting; and one into undercover policing will look at how officers spied on trade unionists and colluded with blacklisters.

Awareness and support is also much more significant than it was 15 years ago. Organisations like Protect now have specific advice for people who think they are blacklisted. 

“There’s an awful long way to go,” Phil said. “I think at least it’s changed some of the narrative but it’s a changed space.

“In 2008 the industry and government weren’t even admitting blacklisting was a problem. That’s totally blown out of the water now.”

Phil now works as a researcher for the Tobacco Control Research Group at the University of Bath, digging into how big tobacco companies influence policy. You can keep up to date with what he’s up to on X.

“Wage theft is an epidemic in the United States. It’s awful what employers will do to make some money on the backs of workers with just outright illegal conduct.  

For example, a few years ago I brought a class action against an employer who paid their workers way less than minimum wage and didn’t pay them over time. They required them to work 66 hours a week, 11 hours a day, six days a week. And they did this to hundreds of workers over 30 years.  

The workers in the class action were terrified of being retaliated against. The employers tried to have several of those involved arrested for fake crimes, deported to their countries of origin, or terminated and suspended from their employment. They created an environment of terror and fear. 

But we went to court. While the case dragged on for years, we ultimately received a recovery of $11m in a class action settlement. This meant that many of the workers in that case received more than $100,000 in recovery. And it was life changing. 

The Wage Theft Monitor is an incredible tool that was created by non-profit newsroom Documented NY. It is a website that's based on information requests that Documented made of the Department of Labor, not about one case, but about all of the wage theft cases. I regularly encourage my colleagues to use it – I just looked up a business on it myself yesterday! (In fact, since I discovered the tool, I’ve become a member of Documented’s advisory council – that was how we met, so to speak.) 

~ I’ve taken a quick look and as Chris says, it’s great. You can search by business, location or industry sector. It displays all the results on a map and you can click onto each business to see a summary of the wage theft cases against that employer ~

It’s useful in a number of ways. Firstly, if I have a case going on, I can go and search that business on the wage theft monitor to see if they’ve had problems with the Department of Labor in the past.  

Secondly, if I’m talking to a legislator about a proposed law to fight against the wage theft crisis – and a lot of people are not so familiar with how serious this crisis is – I can put in a zip code and pull up all the local incidents of wage theft to show them just how much it’s affecting their constituents. 

Thirdly, I can, as a conscientious consumer, look up the businesses around where I live. I’m looking right now at a pizza place that’s a few blocks away from me that I didn’t know was on the wage theft monitor – and it looks like they cheated their employees out of $84,000. So I now know I’m not going to that pizza parlour again! 

It’s another tool in the armoury for people like me, but it is also hugely useful for providing education and scrutiny about wage theft. I hope that, as the monitor becomes used more widely, it could play a role in acting as a deterrent to employers acting in these ways. Because that’s the goal. I would like to see people being afraid of committing these crimes.”

That’s all from me today, although I’d love to hear about any other tools like the Wage Theft Monitor you use in your work or everyday life. I’m fond of the Mark Up’s Blacklight, which lets me see what about my behaviour websites are tracking when I visit them. It can get a little spooky!

I’ll see you again next week,