The recent uproar over the revelation that a company called The Consulting Association (TCA) maintained a blacklist of “problem” employees which it then passed on to construction companies, reminded me of the National Staff Dismissal Register set up in the retail industry last year and which I wrote about in these pages last October. In that case Action Against Business Crime (AABC), a consortium formed between the Home Office (!!!) and the British Retail Consortium, set up a scheme to share information between potential employers of details of employees dismissed for offences of dishonesty, but not convicted in the criminal courts of wrongdoing. In other words if an employer dismissed an employee for theft or fraud they would then place that person’s details on the NSDR and thus make it much harder for them to get alternative work, at least within the retail sector. At the time it was claimed that this didn’t breach the Data Protection Act (DPA), which claim I still find rather surprising.
A rather alarming new initiative was reported last week: the creation of the National Staff Dismissal Register, by an organisation called Action Against Business Crime (AABC), a consortium formed between the Home office and the British Retail Consortium. It is a database for employers to share details on those staff dismissed (but not necessarily convicted in the criminal courts) for offences of dishonesty; e.g. theft, forgery, damage to company property and so on. According to the AABC’s own press release the register seeks to create a central register to cover those employees not convicted or cautioned for criminal offences. It appears that it is aimed at the retail industry at the moment, although it will almost certainly spread if successful. It will go live this month. Apparently it is not in contravention of the Data Protection Act.
This is often a live issue in redundancy situations. At the moment, with the number of redundancies rocketing skywards, it is a question that is being put to me time and again. Quite often the employer’s rationale for placing a person “at risk” of redundancy can look shaky.
The definition of redundancy is found at s.139 of the Employment Rights Act 1996. It is defined thus;
(1) For the purposes of this Act an employee who is dismissed shall be taken to be dismissed by reason of redundancy if the dismissal is wholly or mainly attributable to—
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