“We’re establishing a free-market in ruined futures…”
8th May 2008
Posted in: Fear and Loathing | Hypocrisy | RAGE
Written by: Douglas Johnson
This is vile. Businesses have decided it’s about time that they introduced their own version of the criminal record. The National Staff Dismissals Register, an online database going live later this month, will contain the details of all employees of signed up companies dismissed for simple allegations of certain offences. There doesn’t need to have been any proof, or criminal conviction - merely allegations.
These details will remain on the database for five years. They will be available to any company signed up to the site. That already means Harrods, Selfridges and Reed Managed Services, amongst others.
Presence on the Register is likely to scupper chances of employment entirely. Who’d employ someone who might be guilty of theft, forgery or fraud, if they even suspected them of it? No-one who valued their money, certainly…
They say it’s not a blacklist.
How?
The system is so open to abuse it’s frightening. People have been falsely accused of offences before. They’ve been sacked for them. They’d lose their job, but they wouldn’t get a criminal record. It’d be unpleasant, but at least they could move on.
This destroys any chance of that. Once an employee is on the database, rightfully or not, they’re on it - and have less of a chance of getting a job. In a case where an employee is wrongly dismissed, that’s simply unfair. You can imagine it. Some lecherous old fart of an employer, as is known to happen, makes advances at an employee. Wisely cautious of flabby middle aged flesh and rampantly under-sexed bosses, they reject them. The boss gets offended, concocts a vague tale of misplaced paper-clips and laptops, and the employee is fired.
And now that goes on their record as theft. For five years.
So, that’s gross injustice number 1. But what about gross injustice number 2? This database utterly dismisses the notion that people can change. Yes, an employee might commit a crime at an early stage, and rightly be dismissed for it. But why can’t they change? Dismissal might be the very spur to drive them back into obeying the law.
If a greasy speck like Jonathan Aitken could do it…
There are reasons employers aren’t allowed to share details of employees. If a crime’s committed, and there’s enough evidence to collar someone, then they’ll get a criminal record. Future employers can judge them on that. If not, then past employers have no right to tar their future with semi-substantiated accusations so weak that they couldn’t even take them to the police.
If a government collected a database like this, there’d be (rightful) outrage. “Statist tyranny!” would go up the cry. “Evil socialists coming to steal your freedom, evil, evil…”
So why is there no outcry when the private sector does it?
