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.

To critics it sounds like a scenario from some Orwellian nightmare – an online database of workers accused of theft and dishonesty, regardless of whether they have been convicted of any crime, which bosses can access when vetting potential employees.

But this is no dystopian fantasy. Later this month, the National Staff Dismissal Register (NSDR) is expected to go live.

Organisers say that major companies including Harrods, Selfridges and Reed Managed Services have already signed up to the scheme. By the end of May they will be able to check whether candidates for jobs have faced allegations of stealing, forgery, fraud, damaging company property or causing a loss to their employers and suppliers.

Workers sacked for these offences will be included on the register, regardless of whether police had enough evidence to convict them. Also on the list will be employees who resigned before they could face disciplinary proceedings at work.

The project has attracted little publicity. But trade unions and civil liberties campaigners are warning that it leaves workers vulnerable to the threat of false accusations.

TUC policy officer Hannah Reed says that while criminal activity in the workplace can never be condoned, she fears such a system is open to abuse.

“The Criminal Records Bureau was set up to assist employers to make safe appointments when recruiting staff to work with vulnerable groups. The CRB already provides appropriate and properly regulated protection for employers. Under the new register, an employee may not be aware they have been blacklisted or have any right to appeal.”

James Welch, the legal director of human rights group Liberty, also says that he is concerned that the register does not offer sufficient redress to the falsely accused.

“This scheme appears to bypass existing laws which protect employees by limiting the circumstances when information about possible criminal activity can be shared with potential employers.”

Surely there’s a robust legal challenge to made against this sort of thing?  I don’t know what the Data Protection Act actually says, but if it does anything then it’s got to protect us against this kind of extralegal blacklist.  The NSDR has probably only got as far as it has through lack of publicity; I usually consider the act of writing to MPs as an act of the utmost futility but in this case I think it might get us somewhere, and maybe write to some newspapers too.

Facebook group: Workers against the NSDR [note: this link was broken before, now I've fixed it]