Back in March I wrote about the register of ‘undesirables’ in the building industry illegally maintained by Ian Kerr of the Consulting Association, and Jobsworth gave an update in May about the National Staff Dismissal Register.
Ian Kerr has now been convicted of not registering as a data controller and fined £5,000 by Knutsford Crown Court. As the Register reports, Kerr’s Consulting Association kept a register of 3,213 workers based on their relationship with other employees, union activities, and plain old troublemaking. 17 building firms used his services, and may now face prosecution themselves.
This draws further unwelcome attention against the fledgling NSDR, which holds details of its members’ employees dismissed for theft, falsification/forgery, fraud, and the hopelessly broad “Causing a loss to the Company or another party” and “Causing damage to Company property”. Its guidelines, which aren’t available for download, also specify that inclusion on the register cannot be sole grounds for refusing to hire an applicant – which is just plain weird. If an otherwise perfect candidate for stock supervisor is on the register for having loaded all the stock at his last work into his mate’s van, then why wouldn’t that be grounds not to hire?
Exactly, methinks that the proviso that being on the register shouldn’t be the sole grounds for refusing to employ someone is a smokescreen designed to avoid the NSDR becoming embroiled in litigation. Clearly most employers reading the NSDR are going to refuse to employ for this very reason.