Tag Archives: Ian Kerr

BLACKLIST BAN!

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Council finally calls time on sickening anti-safety bosses – but will Mayor Fergo take notice?

Bristol Hazards Group - fighting the blacklisting bastardsAfter a long fight led by determined construction workers, Bristol City Council in early September voted to END THE GRAVY TRAIN of juicy local authority contracts for firms that profit out of ‘blacklists’.

With blacklisting, construction giants like McAlpine secretly trade ILLEGAL FILES on ‘troublesome workers’ – the ones that kick up a fuss over inadequate safety – and keep them out of a job.

Whilst the new council policy won’t affect private sector projects – such as the building of Cabot Circus, where building boss CULLUM MCALPINE admits his company blacklisted brickies and sparks from the site due to whistleblowing on safety issues – it could help workers running council services.

As we revealed in The BRISTOLIAN #4.4 back in June, KIER GROUP – now responsible for Bristol’s household waste collections after it bought up May Gurney – has a proven record as a key contributor to the blacklisting database.

Thanks to the LONG-RUNNING PICKET of May Gurney’s depots by blacklisted workers, union activists and local campaign Bristol Hazards Group that put the blacklist issue onto the table, Kier may yet lose that lucrative council rubbish collection contract…

Focus now shifts to McAlpine’s fellow Merchant Venturer, millionaire mayor George Ferguson and his own CAVALIER APPROACH TO HEALTH AND SAFETY.

It was Mayor Fergo’s outspoken disregard for safety that helped cost cyclist Sean Phillips his life in March (see The BRISTOLIAN #4.3), and in 2009 his deathtrap ‘Millennium Mast’ in the Centre had to be dismantled over fears pieces could fall off and cause fatalities.

And did we mention his fast-becoming-legendary CONTEMPT for ordinary bar workers at his image-over-substance hipster venues like The Tobacco Factory, #1 Harbourside and Canteen?

So whether Gorgeous George actually honours the blacklist ban, or throws his weight behind his corner-cutting rich building boss pals, is still not entirely clear…

NOTHING VENTURED, NOTHING GAINED… HOW BRISTOL’S COSY CLUB FOR RICH BUSINESSMEN KEEPS THE MONEY GOING ROUND

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A couple of examples emerge of just how charitable our old friends at the SOCIETY OF MERCHANT VENTURERS really are.

First, please step forward TIM ROSS who seems well-versed in that old Venturer trick of turning public money into private wealth.

Ross was, until June last year, Chairman of financial basketcase waste company MAY GURNEY (see The BRISTOLIAN #4.3 & 4.4), currently being rescued from financial collapse via a multi-million pound takeover by anti-union construction outfit, KIER GROUP. Indeed such are the financial problems at May Gurney that Bristol City Council has been discouraged from enforcing the penalty clauses in its waste collection contract with the company as it was thought it would bankrupt them and our rubbish could go uncollected.

However, bankruptcy is not something that’s likely to happen to Ross: once the ink was dry on May Gurney’s contract with the city council, he cashed in 100,000 of his shares in December 2011 to pocket A COOL £235,000 – conveniently before the share price of the company went south! He scarpered as Chairman of May Gurney six months later, just a few months before the share price tumbled below a pound.

Our second all-heart, all-charidee Venturer is CULLUM MCALPINE, scion of the civil engineering giant SIR ALFRED MCALPINE LTD, a firm that is never far from a tasty government contract or two. Cullum is a director of the company and has been personally named in papers lodged with the high court as being “intimately” involved in the operation of a “clandestine” organisation – The Consulting Association – holding a list of people barred from the construction industry. Or trade union blacklisting as it’s generally known.

The court papers claim, “McAlpine was the founding chairman at the [Consulting Association’s] inception in 1993. He was intimately involved in the foundation and operation of TCA. He formally offered Mr Kerr the position of director in August 1993. He finalised the written particulars of Mr Kerr’s employment, sending them to members for approval and obtaining legal advice in relation to them. He oversaw the arrangement of life and health insurance for Mr Kerr as part of his remuneration.”

IAN KERR was the director of The Consulting Association, the organisation which operated the ILLEGAL BLACKLIST OF WORKERS on behalf of big construction firms until he was exposed and prosecuted in 2009.

Perhaps Mr McAlpine should keep better company – as should the Society of Merchant Venturers.

AND ANOTHER THING …

Venturer DAVID ORD, co-owner of the Bristol Port Company at Avonmouth, has donated more than £330,000 to the Tory Party since 2005.

He was also one of forty donors to attend dinners with senior ministers, including the Prime Minister, in the last quarter of 2012.

So, did Ord use his access to ‘Dodgy’ David Cameron to lobby for the scrapping of plans for an electricity-generating Severn estuary barrage?