Retailers risk libel nightmare over 'no-work' database

Hmm

"Falsification or forgery of documents"

That's every MP and member of the civil service unemployable then. :oP

This database is a reprehensible extension of NuLabour's Police State.

Another thing

'Mireskandari cautioned: "Frankly, if I have CCTV showing someone stealing from the cash register, then I'm confident I can sack that person, but I wouldn't want to share that information. It's a real risk."'

Really? Just prosecute the bugger for theft. A criminal record will have the desired affect and it has the added safeguard of going through the courts.

wrong

There are some obvious problems with the idea that it would be ok to have a register on people based on accusations. People can go a long way of track if all some manager has to do is draw on gossip and presumptions. The lack of requirement for anyone to be proven guilty seems to be an obvious issue. The scheme is also designed to protect companies from wistleblowers - see the following point:

"Causing a loss to the company or another party (e.g. Supplier)"

It appears to be quite clear that any company whose business comes into disrepute because of the public becoming aware of its dodgy activity would have experienced a loss.

It is scandalous that there would be any governmental agencies at all who would condone this type of register - especially a socalled 'labour' government..

... Paris because even she knows that we are ruled by the new aristocracy

Big Brother...

The idea that companies can document suspicion with no basis in formal evidence is extremely worrying. "Employee X was caught stealing from the till on CCTV but we preferred not to prosecute" sounds very definitive, but who will verify this statement - (a) who looked at the CCTV, (b) was the employee caught with the money, (c) was the till actually out at all?

I agree with the anonymous cowards, the only safe way to record facts about employees undertaking illegal activities is through the police and the courts. Anything else is, in effect, hearsay because there has been no independent investigation...

I can't wait for this to burn the employers who sign up for it

True story, not a "what if"

Many moons ago I was drummed out of a job as a checkout operator in a major supermarket chain, supposedly for "planning to come back at night and rob the place."

As a (really, really) nervous teenager, I just caved, walked out without putting up a fight, and thankfully got another job within a couple of days.

The manager who got rid of me was later convicted a year later for paying his shelf-stacker mistress two salaries and stealing thousands of pounds worth of cigarettes and spirits.

What would have happended to me in this case? Would my name have been removed from the register after his conviction?

Would I have had to prove that the manager acted with malice or was covering his tracks?

I only found out about it by accident - what if I hadn't?

Would my life be blighted now?

Very useful

This could be really useful for management even without actually putting someone on it.

Just the threat of being barred from the job market will stop workers doing all those terrible things like refusing to sleep with the boss.

Job for life:

1. Get on this database (without actually committing a crime.)

2. Leave job.

3. Apply for job elsewhere (Where they will use this database.)

4. Be rejected for job.

5. Sue.

6. Repeat 3 to 5 until sufficient cash to buy yacht / house / island....

Too late..

"The regulations mean that only allegations made after the NSDR goes live can be included."

It means that Ant 'n' Dec (or ITV) won't be going on the register...

*sigh*

Can already be done, surely?

In a lot of jobs where you have a position of trust, companies and public sector employers can perform a Police background check.

With a police background check any returned results would surely be confirmation of guilt of a crime, or at the least issues that have been reported to the 'proper' authorities and therefore much more reliable.

I have been in positions where I needed to agree to this check to allow me to work, and I have no issues with this.

I know these background checks can take quite some time, and it not as quick as logging onto a website. However surely a better use of the money going into this would be to help streamline the Police check process?

Rather than this absurd guilty because you can't prove your innocence rubbish.

*Disclosure: Mireskandari is retained by The Register.

Lordy... I remember when El Reg didn't have two pennies to rub together (what was Drew and Lester's other other site? The Rock or something?).... and now they have lawyers retained?

Wow.

Thinking about it, I guess so. With all the "skip this ad" and pages going with MS, HP, Dell, etc colors depending on the ad, I reckon they would need lawyers and have the wherewithall to pay for them... sad commentary really. Bet they drink import beer now.

*sigh*

At least I still have my Vulture pin from back when El Reg did bullshiite contests... just memories now...

But what have you to hide?

If you're a good worker, you shouldn't be worried about this. It will only be used for completely honest and good reasons.... now, back to work before your slacking is noted as causing a loss....

Blue Collared?

Look at most major retail shops and you see the "We prosecute all shoplifters" stickers or similar. Surely this would apply to staff as well, so why the need for this at all?

Sounds very a)dubious and b)redundant

Wide open for abuse

Just reading the phrase:

"Causing a loss to the company or another party (e.g. Supplier)"

Merely by leaving you could cause a loss to the company, if you were any good at your job then the company loses now that they no longer have your services...

It's also quite easy for vindictive bosses to use any excuse to put someone they don't like on the register, it's not uncommon for people to be extremely angry at losing staff, especially to a competitor.

For actual criminal acts, we already have the criminal record system... If you catch someone on CCTV stealing from the cash register, go to the police... That way future employers can check the police criminal records database, and the accusation will be proven by their conviction.

Re:We don't supply references

@Ross Ryles you might have a point here.

As far as I am aware, it is illegal to give bad reference and providing input to a db whose sole purpose is to provide respective employers with potentially damaging info about the person in question might just count towards it.

's ok I didn't wear a coat today. Damn too hot!

Questionable motives

If I get this correctly, any employer could provide information that can be detrimental to the future employment of a former employee without any vetting by this "registry". Tell me, what is to stop an employer who finds himself in one of these situations from being "vindictive":

a) Employee's family situation (sick child, spouse, parents, etc) causes absenteeism. Employer reports as "unreliable".

b) Employee gets a better offer elsewhere, and on providing notice, gets told to "leave immediately". Employer reports as "left without notice".

c) Employee asks for pay raise; or is promised a pay raise that never materializes, and decides to leave. Employer reports as "morale problem".

This registry carries a lot of potential for abuse by employers; and I for one would love to see one who "smacked down" a former employee, "smacked down" themself.

Nation of shop keepers?

Nation of park keepers, more like!

Supposition or fact?

Anything that has not been decided in a court is simply supposition, a company that has CCTV of money being removed from the till has not, based on that act alone, any evidence of theft.

So to put 'Dismissed for theft' or 'Dismissed on suspicion of theft' is a very dangerous thing to do.

Also there is also data protection to think about, will potential job applicants be told that their being offered a position is dependent on them agreeing to being put on a shared database should they be dismissed? What about those already in employ? Will they be coerced into agreeing?

Why are you worried???

Take a look at the track record and then take a guess on what the probablility is of this actually getting off the ground and working.

I have better chances of being Paris's long lost love child she never knew she had.

(I know about the supposed impossibility of that statement, but it is about Paris)

This might be an obvious solution, but...

"Mireskandari cautioned: "Frankly, if I have CCTV showing someone stealing from the cash register, then I'm confident I can sack that person, but I wouldn't want to share that information. It's a real risk.""

I'd definitely share it with the police...

I'd rather become .....

a white farmer in Zimbabwe than return to England to live!

I can remember the days when an Englishman could sit on a train

smoking a cigar, drinking a beer, reading a smutty mag' and telling the

boss what he thought of the company with no fear of being fired, arrested

for having dirty thoughts or shot by MI5. Good grief, you could even fall into a coma on a bus without having barbed projectiles fired into you and getting zapped. Now all you have to do is not do something that the boss cannot prove that you did do and your whole life is on the rocks.

Why doesn't the AABC do something useful?

These companies could save themselves much more cash if they maintained a list of failed directors that had to be paid off after a huge cock-up.

"As an employer you're going to use it selectively."

As an employer, if you use it at all, you will use it on EVERYONE in order to avoid claims (and suits) of unlawful discrimination.

The real issue, as has been pointed out many times above, is that there is no independent vetting of the accusations as would occur with things like criminal convictions. One wonders how many Hicom Business Solutions management would have appeared in the database if it had existed many years ago.

Open to abuse by a certain demographic!

Little 16 year old Johnny Chav, takes first job, doesn't really want it, nicks £50 out of the till, gets blacklisted. DSS tells him to get a job or he gets cut off, he tries 3 places but is blacklisted, can't get off the blacklist and says f**k it and stays on the state scroungers list for the next 3 years. After 3 years, gets a job, nicks something, cycle repeats. Upshot is Johnny Chav, never has to work again and has a perfectly valid reason why he can't get a job.

Proof

You apply for a job and you think it's going well. At the end of the process you get a letter saying your application has not been successful but they will keep your details on file in case a suitable position opens in the future. You prove it was because of what the database said.

Not happy about this

I understand that employers do not want to go through the hassle of lodging a formal complaint against an employee. They would lose more time than it is worth.

But if you're not confident enough to go to the police, you should not be able to put an employee on this database. Especially for something as flimsy as "Causing a loss to the company or a supplier". What does it mean?

"Oh, the sales are lower than before you arrived (which happened to be Christmas season), so you must be the cause we are losing money now. Get out, you're on the list".

If you put somebody on the list, you should be ready to show proof of the employee dishonesty (and being lazy or inefficient is NOT being dishonest) in front of a judge.

Also, the employee should be told. I understand there is a risk the employee might attempt to retaliate by burning the shop down, but it is unacceptable to make it impossible for people to find a job without their knowledge.

So

So , would not the Fuzz and Defective lazy plods want to add this list of degenerate employees to generate a plausible list of new offenders suspect list as well as a supplement for the usual suspect to stitch up for any crime list !

We've been there, ...

... seen that, done that and got the t-shirt back in the '80s, thanks to the wacky antics of fun-loving Norris McWhirter and his misleadingly-named "Freedom Association".

That one got shut down in the end and so will this one. It won't stand a chance in court, if they even get that far.

true stories...

many years ago (I'm 43 now) I was drummed out of a job because my manager accused me of stealing M$ WWG licences; in fact he'd deliberately *lost* them because he'd ordered the wrong ones and couldn't send them back without paying a restocking fee and didn't want to risk another b*ll*cking because he was sh1t at his job. He also had had it in for me for a long time because he was inept and I was rather good, he was a racist and I wasn't, and he was a lazy sod who skived all the time and I got on with my work. Never even got to the cops or courts of course and I did get £10K+ as a settlement before the industrial tribunal was due to take place, but I later found out that despite an *agreed reference* clause, this c*ck was telling prospective employers that I'd been for interviews with, that I'd been sacked for stealing. It took a personal visit to his house with a large bar of iron to make him see the error of his ways, and taught him a valuable lesson about what telling lies about people can result in.

More recently, a friend of my wife's was forced out of her job for *being a drug addict* - what actually happened was that her doctor had changed her prescription medicine for migraines and not made her aware of the side effects, she'd bumped into a police car whilst parking up doing her shopping, the coppers suspected that some sort of chemical effect was at work, took her down the nick, you know the score; eventually well before court the matter was dismissed by the CPS, but not before her so-called manager had embellished the tale to the point that she was supposed to be high on crack and smashed into a police car and resisted arrest. Of course, even after the case was dismissed, malicious people were still accusing her as often happens, so she quit (and she'd been there for 12 years) And when prospective employer's rang up her former manager for a reference, he'd tell them she was a drug addict - until Mrs Taw made a complaint to his superior about him and he got suspended, then died of a heart attack whilst on suspension. Crying shame that....

I'm sure most Reg readers with substantial work experience can relate not dissimilar tales; the point is that this database will be nothing more than an unsubstantiated rumour resource that scapegoats employees whether they deserve to be or not, makes them guilty until proven innocent, and these days how many of us can go about our daily lives without inadvertently breaking one or more of the plethora of laws that have been heaped upon us by this Stalinist bunch of bunglers we voted into office in '97?

CRB checks should be ALL that an employer should be able to ask for or even need. This proposal seems more open to internal and external abuse than even the horrendous DNA database! But sadly, since Maggie Thatch took office in '79, employees' rights have been going down the pan and employers get to oeprate almost without sanction, many thinking that they can treat employees with utter contempt and get away with tit, and they often do.