Blair is not Fair!

Before he became an MP, Prime Minister Blair was a Barrister specialising in employment law. He was his party's spokesman on Employment between 1989 and 1992. He leads a party which was founded to look after the rights of ordinary working people. He insists it still does. While leading the opposition to the Tory government, Blair promised to outlaw employment blacklisting. Now he leads the government, he refuses to do so, insisting that the current employment laws are "fair".

This is what Blair claims is "fair":

• Supposing you worked for a company on a UK government arms procurement contract. The company is committing large-scale systematic criminal fraud worth hundreds of millions of pounds. There are hundreds of people working on the project, and everyone seems to know about it. You've personally seen and heard a work colleague discussing the details of one fraud with a fairly high-up manager. This happened in a crowded open-plan office. You've been ordered by your own line manager to do something which you consider illegal. If you report what you've seen and heard to the police, you could be put on a blacklist, and you might never work again. BLAIR SAYS THAT'S FAIR!
• Supposing you worked for a financial institution which is knowingly laundering money for drug-dealers (like the infamous Bank of Credit and Commerce International). There are hundreds of people working in the company, and everyone seems to know what's going on. If you report it to the police, you could be put on a blacklist, and you might never work again. BLAIR SAYS THAT'S FAIR!
• Suppose you worked for a construction company and you found out they were deliberately breaking the building regulations. They were installing a highly flammable material which gave off poisonous fumes when burning. By reporting it you could save hundreds of lives, but you could be put on a blacklist, and you might never work again. BLAIR SAYS THAT'S FAIR!
• Suppose you worked for a company producing an engine for a civilian aircraft. You find out they're hiding faults which could cause the plane to crash. If that happened everyone on board would probably be killed, along with maybe thousands of people on the ground below. If you report it, you could be put on a blacklist, and you might never work again. BLAIR SAYS THAT'S FAIR!
• You could be put on a blacklist because a manager mistakenly thinks you've done something, or just because he/she's got a personal grudge against you. You might suspect you're on a blacklist, but you could never prove it, and there's nothing you could do about it. BLAIR SAYS THAT'S FAIR!

There are ways other than blacklisting in which the same effect can be achieved. There's whitelisting, where people who are not on the list can't get a job. A company can also give a false and malicious reference. According to a solicitor who worked for one of the big unions, this "goes on all the time and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it." . He even gave an example of a client who was able to prove that the reference he was given contained a damaging lie, and that the company knew it was a lie. The judge ruled that because he could prove it was a lie, it hadn't prevented him from getting a job, so he wasn't entitled to compensation! Some say that simply refusing a reference achieves the same effect as blacklisting.

Let's face it, some people are just incompetent, and others are sheer hell to work with. I wouldn't want to hire some one like that. However, there is a fairer way of dealing with employees which would also provide recruiters with more reliable information,

Companies used to carry out secret evaluation of employees performance. These days most employers use open evaluations, where the employee knows what is said and has a chance to reply. I see no good reason why these evaluations (including the employee's comments) should not be made available to other potential employers. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would be better than the way things are done at present. Any system where the employee knows what's said and has a chance to reply has to be fairer than one where they don't know what's said. From the employers view, it would vastly improve the recruitment process by giving them much better information.

If Blair was genuinely interested in "economic efficiency with social justice", he would be trying to implement something along these lines, and outlawing unfair practices like blacklisting.

Tory B.Liar = Tory Bloody Liar!