The services of the now-defunct company that kept a secret blacklist of “troublesome” workers subscribed to by major employers in construction may also have been used by the offshore oil industry, writes Phil Chamberlain.
A file held by the Consulting Association since 1995 but which has only recently surfaced suggests that the industry body at the time threatened to cut the university funding of an academic if he continued to be critical of health and safety regimes.
Prof Charles Woolfson (pictured), then at the University of Glasgow, was well-respected for his extensive research on safety in the North Sea following the Piper Alpha disaster. He was particularly critical of the drive to cut red tape, which he saw as weakening health and safety codes.€
