Scot Labour Boss to crack down on blacklisting

based on information supplied by Joe Bailey.

SCOTTISH Labour leader Richard Leonard claims he will crackdown on outsourcing and blacklisting.  In a speech to the Scottish Labour conference as the party’s leader in Scotland, he condemned firms that exploited and blacklisted workers. 
 
'Our strategy will ensure that we stop once and for all giving millions of pounds of public money in subsidies to exploitative tax-avoiding companies like Amazon down the road in Dunfermline,' he said. 
 
'And that we stop awarding billions of pounds of public procurement contracts to companies which don’t pay a living wage, which use zero-hours contracts and which blacklist workers. So, we meet in Dundee and we applaud the redevelopment of the waterfront, but we condemn the use of a blacklisting company to do it.' 
 
Construction giants BAM and Sir Robert McAlpine have harvested major contracts out of the redevelopment, which includes a new branch of the V&A museum.  Both were backers of the undercover blacklisting organisation the Consulting Association, which was exposed in 2009 for running an illegal blacklist of trade union activists, often targeted for their workplace safety activities.

The  announcement of the victory of Leonard last November, was considered at the time another  triumph for Jeremy Corbyn.  It is believed the Unite union played a significant role in this.

This week saw yet another Corbyn prefered candidate appointed as Labour's general secretary when Jennie Formby, an official from the Unite union.  She defeated Christine Blower, former general secretary of the National Union of Teachers.

Jim Pickard in the Financial Times today described the Ms. Formby triumph thus:
'Ms. Formby's victory ..... demonstrated how comfortable Mr. Corbyn is with Unite, Britain's largest union, controlling many posts in his operation.'

Madam Formby is seen by some as a bit of a brute in the office and some of the staff have been quick to throw in the towel in as soon as it was known she'd got the job.

It also seems that Momentum  has some misgivings about the dominant influence of Unite.  Momentum wants a wider reflection of views within the party than the union base.

******