Construction worker cleared of being a “terrorist threat” in long running protest against blacklisting
The High Court rejected a bid from Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) to silence an ex-employee and prevent him from picketing a power station, owned by SSE, where he was employed under contract before being made redundant within weeks of starting work there in December.
Steve Acheson, electrician and long time militant trade unionist, has been protesting outside the Fiddlers Ferry power station near Warrington for almost a year against his dismissal from the site, claiming victimisation because of his previous union activity in the construction industry. Freedom was present at the high court when the judge, who previously ruled on the injunction against protestors at the Drax power station, dismissed outright the case made by SSE lawyers against Acheson as ‘bordering on fantasy’.
At an earlier hearing SSE lawyers attempted to convince the court Acheson was a threat to the national power supply and sought to bring an injunction against him under the Terrorism Act without his knowledge. They also attempted to connect Acheson’s grievance with the Climate Camp protest threats. The judge refused to hear that case and instructed SSE, the second largest supplier of electricity and natural gas in the UK, to inform Acheson of the allegations being pursued against him. SSE lawyers subsequently dropped the Climate Camp connection but persisted with the injunction despite producing no concrete evidence the trade union activist posed a threat to the power station or that he had committed any criminal behaviour.
After this important victory in the courts Acheson, along with other targeted workers, is determined to fight on against his dismissal and the illegal blacklist that is still being used as a tool to attack workplace militancy in the construction industry. He commented: “I’ve seen my file and it confirmed definitely that I’ve been victimised on trade union grounds” adding “There’s a full sheet of data on my last employment to the day I left. It’s like a shadow following me around, someone monitoring me, it’s incredible”.
Confirmation of the existence of the blacklist emerged as early as 2006 during a tribunal involving Acheson at the time working on the Manchester Royal Infirmary site. The tribunal chairman admitted: ‘a blacklist exists in the electrical industry with the purpose of denying trade unionists employment’, but official public recognition only came earlier this year when the Information Commissioners Office launched a prosecution against Ian Kerr, head of the Consulting Agency which maintained a database of confidential information on over 3,000 construction workers covering the last 15 years. Major Olympics contractors Balfour Beatty and Laing O’Rourke are just two of the 44 construction companies who paid to access the information used to blacklist militant workers and “known troublemakers”.
