The BBC site draws our attention to yet another attempt to put people on a database that will be abused, that will lead to people suffering gross injustice and that appears on the face of it, to have little in the way of safeguards:
Workers accused of theft or damage could soon find themselves blacklisted on a register to be shared among employers. It will be good for profits but campaigners say innocent people could find it impossible to get another job
This is not people who have been convicted of a crime, who have been demonstrably proved to have been guilty – this is simply a blacklist of grievances, of allegations, of subjective opinion, tittle tattle and unsubstantiated gossip. No “innocent until proven guilty” here. There is the useless and toothless data protection act that an aggrieved employee can call upon in the event of being wrongfully included on the database, of course. That is, if they are aware that they are on the blacklist in the first instance. At least with the criminal records fiasco, people get to see what is held on them.
I don’t have a problem with employers using references to check up on potential employees – that’s prefecrtly acceptable. And, in the event of a falling out between employer and employee, the employee may choose not to use that employer as a referee; it’s what I have done in the past. That this database is a terrible idea and is little more than a blacklist with no proper safeguards, and, indeed, is wide open to abuse by employers with a grievance and has the potential to wreck an innocent person’s life, is pretty obvious to a reasonable observer. However, to realise that not everyone is a reasonable person, indeed, that some are terminally and dangerously stupid, one only has to look at the comment from Les in Elgin. This moronic fuckwit has this to offer the discussion:
Big brother state? I’m all for that as at the end of the day, it makes society safer and fairer and gives criminals a harder time; if you have nothing to hide then why should you be worried?
To think that my grandfather ruined his health on the convoys, and died young as a consequence, to make this country a safer place for ignorant totalitarian shitheads like this.
Frankly if people like that continue to breed then as a country we might as well sign ourselves over to the Chinese.
It’s the same with credit reference agencies, they’re neither obliged to tell you when they add you to their lists, nor obliged to get their facts straight. We need a comprehensive misuse of data act, with big fuck-off teeth to it… 🙂
Mac the Knifes last blog post..It’s official, we’re all a bunch of wasters
I think the TUC should retaliate by instituting a database of crap employers, who abuse their employees, fail to pay salary in a timely fashion, bully people into working excessive unpaid overtime. This database should be available online so that employees can vet their prosepective employer.
It looks like Wendy Alexander is finally doing England an (unintentional) favour by trying to rid us of “Les in Elgin”.
Let’s set up a database of f***ing morons and start of with Les of Elgin (who is already in breach of the gummit’s proposed ‘no anonymous internet usage’ policy, natch).Twat.
Mark Wadsworths last blog post.."Great tits cope well with warming"
Stephen, some of the commenters on the BBC piece mentioned the idea of a database of bad employers. I do notice that employers are quick to criticise what they see as bad employees, but it’s a two way street. Twenty odd years ago I left a half decent job only to find that my new employer had lied at the interview about the terms and scope of my role and the salary. A fractious two months later, I left under what can only be described as difficult circumstances. What, I wonder, would they have said about me had I included them on my CV or offered them as a reference?
Umbongo – unfortunately, while Les may go, Brighton remains a part of England… 😉