to urge any MNers who have ever been involved in environmental or union activism to check the construction industry blacklist!

[Blacklisted]

I have NCed for this to protect my anonymity but I am a genuine and regular user of MN.

I discovered recently that I was on The Consulting Agency blacklist - an illegal list of people that was used by major construction companies to bar individuals from ever being employed in the industry. This is presumably because of my (fairly minor tbh!) involvement when much younger in environmental activism. I'm now awaiting a copy of the file held on me which may shed some light on why I am on the blacklist and how my information was gathered.

It turns out that there are 240 women on the blacklist so its not outside the realms of possibility that more of them are MNers...

So, if anyone else on MN has any suspicions at all that they may have been put on this list, you can check it out by emailing Phil Read from the GMB ([email protected]) with your full name (including middle name) and date of birth. He can check the details against the database and then advise you on how to proceed if your name is a match.

The construction industry still has many issues with females far beyond the well-known 'blacklists' (and there are more than one).

Oddly, I know one of the women who was/is on that list. She was a bloody good chippy but she was not welcome. Her blacklisting happened about 6 months after she started work, having won a highly advertised, national campaign leading to a full apprenticeship.

She has since retrained and is now a lawyer specialising in work based misogenies.