Thursday 2 March 2017

What Did Union Bosses Know about Blacklist?

The material below is taken directly from the Blog of the whistle-blower Alan Wainwright dated Monday, 27 February 2017, which we publish without comment.  N.V. Editor.

IN this post we are specifically going to look at the actions of Mick Tuff, current Unite area official for the West Midlands. The region Gerard Coyne boasts he has led for the last fifteen years in his Unite leadership election manifesto (albeit they did not merge with Amicus until 2007).

I alerted Tuff to the blacklisting at Balfour Beatty Engineering Services Limited (then Haden Young) back in 2005 and presented him with the two key pieces of blacklisting evidence in my possession:

1. The Haden Young blacklist checking sheets
2. The Jubilee Line, Royal Opera House and Pfizer lists

It was this exact same evidence, no more or less, that David Clancy at the ICO used to locate and close down the Consulting Association (CA) in 2009, some four years later.

It then took a further seven years to get any justice, in which only 771 of the 3,213 received meaningful compensation in May 2016.

So lets look at what Tuff did with the blacklisting evidence. There can only be one of two possible outcomes from the documents I'm presenting here.

Outcome 1. Senior Officials leaned on Tuff and forced him to bury this issue.

Outcome 2. Tuff buried this evidence of his own volition.

The first theory is supported by a Facebook exchange between myself and ex Amicus Official, Gareth Wallis, who is referring to conversations with Tuff in 2005. Gareth eventually left the union to work at the Electrical Contractors Association, and subsequently, CA member, Mathew Hall/SPIE.

I have just used extracts in this post, but the full documents are available to download from this website under the various "Bent Union Officials" posts via the Index.

In the first two pages of this facebook message exchange, Gareth talks about his labour management experience of Tom Hardacre blacklisting workers:

Gareth Wallis Quote:

( Line deleted here by NV owing to being possibly defamatory to Tommy Hardacre)

"I don't know if he ever formally submitted stuff to Ian Kerr. What I do know is that he would publicly say to me and my ECA colleagues:

"You lot should be making public statements against blacklisting. You should be telling them to employ AN Other."

Then after the meeting he'd say: 

"You know I've got to say that, but don't touch him. He's a fuckin nightmare" 

Gareth then goes on to talk about his friend, Mick Tuff. 

You just mentioned Mick Tuff. I know him very well.

I remember Mick telling me on the day you had first contacted him - We were at the JIB National Conference in Bosworth Hall and he asked me what the fuck to do. I said he should represent you. I also know that he was leant on from above, because I know Mick wanted to take it on.

He confided in me because we were good pals. I've not seen him much since then but whenever I spoke to him since, and even until recently, he just says to me "They told me I had to leave it Stu, the bastards".

This exchange suggests that Outcome 1 is the correct one, and that the powers that be leaned on Tuff to bury the blacklisting evidence. 

Maybe they didn't lean on him, so let's look at Outcome 2.

A freedom of information request to Unite in 2012 revealed a number of very interesting facts. These are detailed in a letter from Tuff to Alison Humphrey at solicitors, Rowley Ashworth dated 21 July 2006. This is the period immediately after I had raised the blacklisting directly with Derek Simpson.

I will provide a download of the actual document below, but the letter details the following:

1. That Tuff believed my evidence did not prove anything and was just a set of names.

Fact: Tuff was in possession of the actual Haden Young blacklisting check sheets, and in particular, one which had the name of Michael Shakespeare on it, who had been rejected by Haden Young following that particular Consulting Association check.

Fact: Tuff was in possession of the lists of names of over 500 workers involved in industrial disputes at the Jubilee Line, Royal Opera House and Pfizer projects. Lists of names that had been exchanged between Balfour Beatty Engineering Services Limited (then Balfour Kilpatrick) and Drake & Scull.
For more go to

ALAN WAINWRIGHT & THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY BLACKLIST

www.alanwainwright.blogspot.com 

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