">The Guardian newspaper picked up and expanded the story. And union operatives pressed their complaints in Parliament and with government agencies, with some results: The U.K. Information Commission Office fined the blacklist “consultant” and shut it down, and Parliament in 2010 ">passed an updated information law that outlines “prohibited lists.”

Such a list is defined as one that “contains details of persons who are or have been members of trade unions” or involved in union activity and is compiled “with a view to being used by employers or employment agencies for the purposes of discrimination” over hiring or treatment.

The operation of the main blacklist at least until 2009 is fairly well documented.

About 40 big contractors paid over many years an annual $4,840 subscription fee for access to a database and a $3.50 fee for each individual use of it. The database contained informal criticisms of craft workers that included comments such as “trouble maker” and “member of the CP,” or Communist Party.

Through such comments an unknown number of workers were dismissed from projects or never hired, and they were never informed of the reasons.

According to ">an interim Parliamentary committee report, the entries on the workers included comments such as “Elected shop steward causing a great deal of trouble,” “large family … troublesome,” “not politically motivated but well versed in troublemaking,” “well versed in manipulating situation,” “bad all around” and “on the building industry blacklist.”

One of the more malicious references was “girlfriend has been involved in several marriages of convenience.”

Hearings over illegal dismissals—employment cases—took too long and rarely led to a worker returning to a jobsite in time, unions argued.

U.K. officials are now heavily involved in resolving blacklist matters. As of Sept. 19, the Information Commissioner’s Office said it had dealt with 3,848 phone calls about the main blacklist and provided 442 individuals with a copy of their personal data.

At least one civil lawsuit has been filed by a worker against the blacklist users.

The contractors that have agreed to the compensation settlement are: Balfour Beatty plc., Carillion plc, Costain Group plc, Kier Group plc., Laing O’Rourke Ltd., Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd., Skanska U.K. plc. and VINCI plc. In a joint statement, the companies apologize for their involvement, the impact on the workers and call for the other blacklist users to join them.

Investigation Testimony

Cullom McAlpine, a director of contractor Sir Robert McAlpine, one of the users of the blacklist, was chairman of the private consulting company that maintained the blacklist from 1993 to 1996. Testifying before the Parliament’s Scottish Affairs Committee hearings on blacklisting on Jan. 22, McAlpine said no criteria had been set for entering information about a worker on the list.

All the members using it were experienced big-contractor human resource professionals and it was “entirely up to them” about how to use the list, he told the committee.