Liverpool TUC & the Blacklist

Unite's Gail Cartmail & the Northern Narative!

'Boys on the Blacklist' talk given by

Brian Bamford, Secretary of Tameside TUC,

to Liverpool TUC on the 19th, January 2015:

 

I first met the 'Boys on the Blacklist' in Manchester's Piccadilly Square one afternoon on a picket during the DAF DISPUTE in 2003.  

At that time I was on a mission to give them a cheque for all of £10 from Tameside TUC.
I didn't know then, what we all know now, that this would lead the most significant industrial struggles of this century so far.   

The battle against the blacklist in the BRITISH building trade began in there Manchester Piccadilly, in 2003.   There in 2003, in both Manchester Piccadilly and later on in the pickets in Crown Square near the Law courts was where it all began. 

 

None of us knew where all this would end up!

 Soon after these early pickets was when at the Manchester Employment Tribunal that Michael Fahey, a manager for the sub-contractor DAF Electricial Contractors PLC, famously declared:

'AMICUS IS OUR UNION!'

 

 Bringing the natural response from the union barrister:

'YOUR UNION, MR FAHEY?'

 'YES' ,  he says, 'We pay the union dues!'

 Thus  the boss of DAF Electrical Contractors PLC pays the union affiliations for his own workforce on site.
 

When Michael Fahey said:  'IT'S OUR UNION'   

 That was a signal, the vital signal that something is anmiss in the culture of labour relations on the British building sites.  

Sometime in 2004, on a picket in Crown Square, while standing with the electrician Sean Keaveney I took a photo of Dave Fahey, the senior boss or managing director of DAF. 

 

The photo I took of Mr. Fahey was later to appear in this small booklet entitled 'Locked-Out Manchester Electricians' published by Tameside TUC.  This pamphlet was financially backed by the Greater Manchester Fire Brigades Union; Tameside TUC; Manchester Social Forum; Oldham Trades Council; the North West TUC, the Greater Manchester County Associatioon of TUCs and the regional journal Northern Voices.

In this booklet over a decade ago we stated that: 
'it aims  to capture the essence of /// a small but important dispute:    The Manchester Lockout of the DAF electricians.'
and in our conclusion, at that time in 2004, we stated an analysis that was very different from that that we are proposing today in the 'Boys on the Blacklist'. 

 

'it aims to capture the essence of ///  a small but important dispute':  /// 

In the 'Locked-out Electricians' we simply concluded that the dispute was '...important because it reflects a decline in the standards of workmanship in Britain by bringing in semi-skilled workers to do skilled work [producing] a willingness to run risks with safety at work through cutting corners and casualisation.'
 

What has happened here is, that in just over a decade, a dispute that kicked-off with health and safety issues on the British building sites, and cheap labour on British building sites, has clearly moved on to something much more significant.

With this new book I think that we have now come to realise that we're up against something very much more radical; and fundemental than health and safety or cheap labour however important these issues are.  Now in this later book the 'Boys on the Blacklist' I think we now know that we're up against something more serious, and that in dealing with the affiliates of the Consulting Assocaition we have seen a culture, a spirit of capital, that both red raw in tooth and claw.

There are two areas of serious concern which are alluded to in both these books - the 'Manchester Locked-out Electricians' and the 'Boys on the Blacklist'.  Both deal with what are for all of us trade unionists two serious matters, but neither resolve the two problems:

PROBLEM 1.    TO WHAT EXTENT WERE FULL-TIME TRADE UNION OFFICIALS INVOLVED IN EITHER PROVIDING INTELLEGENCE OR ENFORCING THE BUILDING SITE BLACKLIST? 

This has been alleged many times by lads in the building trade & some names has been put forward.  The whistle-blower & Agency manager Jim Simms has argued that this was the case but when I met him while we were producing this book he didn't provide us with a smoking gun.

In our earlier book 'The Lock-out Electricians' an academic Dave White, then working at Leeds University wrote:

'In the Manchester DAF dispute, workers have evidence that Amicus officials sanctioned their sacking in order to preserve good relations with management.'

At the time of the Manchester Employment Tribunal hearing in 2003, I believe one Amicus official was named as being present at meetings that excluded certain electricians from the CROWN SQUARE site.

PROBLEM 2.   WHAT ABOUT THE CLAIM // THAT AMICUS WAS /// FOR YEARS INREIPT OF UNION DUES FROM THE CONTRACTING COMPANIES?

Over this there has been strong evidence and convincing claims from another whistle-blower called Alan Wainwright:  I think he told Gail Cartmail, Deputy General Secretary of UNite, that the company Carillion paid AMICU £100,000 a year in union dues. 

When, while researching this latest pamphlet we came to read GAIL CARTMAIL'S own report on blacklisting produced for UNITE in 2011; we found that she hadn't even interviewed  ALAN WAINWRIGHT//

We naturally asked her while producing this book  WHY SHE HADN'T BOTHERED to interview such an important witness:  We are still waiting for her answer.

 

BUT GAIL CARTMAIL HAS FOUND TIME TO E-MAIL SOME OF HER COLLEAGUES and

ON THE 5^th, November 2014, about 2 weeks after the 'BOYS ON THE BLACKLIST' went on sale.  GAIL CARTMAIL an e-mail to the Unite head of legal services, Howard Becket, and several of her senior colleagues.  This e-mail was leaked to us at tameside TUC and reads as follows: 

'Colleagues, 

'PLEASE BE AWARE MATERIAL IN THIS PUBLICATION WAS PUBLISHED WITHOUT AGREEMENT and I BELIEVE BREACHES THE TUC POLICY ON FUNDING TRADES COUNCIL PROJECTS.   

'WE HAVE REITERATED THAT ONLY AN INDEPENDENT PUBLIC INQUIRY INTO BLACKLISTING WITH THE POWER TO FORENSICALLY ANALYSIS EVIDENCE & TAKE WITNESS STATEMENTS & CROSS EXAMINE UNDER OATH WILL REVEAL THE TRUTH ABOUT THE SCANDAL OF BLACKLISTING - LABOUR HAS COMMITTED TO THIS  & IN THE MEANTIME, WELL INTENTIONED BUT AMATEUR EFFORTS ARE JUST THAT,   AMATEUR & POTENTIALLY SELF-DEFEATING. 

CONTACT ME IF YOU WISH TO DISCUSS.   

AND BY THE WAY THERE WERE 'GIRLS' ON THE BLACKLIST TOO -  EVERYDAY SEXISM.'

THANKS,  GAIL.

 _____________________________________

So there you go comrades!  & that you know that we're 'EVERYDAY SEXISTS!'

I'll bet somebody got his or her arse chewed when Gail found out that her e-mail had been leaked to us.

What's interesting here is that Gail Cartmail didn't really want to dig the dirt on AMICUS  and full-time officials who may have been involved in the blacklist.  She just wants to hand the problem over to a future Labour Government.  The last thing she wants to do is to say the Emperor has no clothes.  Of course, Gail talks of an 'independent public inquiry' into blacklisting but how can it be genuinely independent when the biggest donor to the Labour Party is Unite the Union?