Unions and campaign groups have called for an overhaul of whistleblowing legislation to close loopholes which mean many offshore workers receive next to no legal safeguards when raising alarms.
The demands come amid reports that workers have been victimised and issued with ‘Not Required Back’ (NRB) status for flagging concerns, despite North Sea oil and gas companies having publicly committed to root out blacklisting practices.
Current legislation – namely the Public Interest Disclosure Act (PIDA) 1998 – makes it unlawful to subject a worker to negative treatment or to dismiss them because they have raised a whistleblowing concern. Yet the nature of offshore employment arrangements mean those protections may not apply to workers and seafarers.
As Caitlin Comins, legal officer at the UK’s whistleblowing charity Protect told Energy Voice: “Crucially, UK whistleblowing law does not apply beyond UK territorial waters and does not include self-employed or off-payroll workers, who constitute the majority of offshore workers.
“This combined with the lack of any legal or regulatory requirements for offshore companies to have whistleblowing policies, leaves offshore worker at the mercy of unscrupulous employers.”
Protect, along with other worker representatives, is therefore campaigning for a new legal bill that would ensure those protections are extended, secure legal aid support for whistleblowing cases and introduce mandatory standards for employers to follow when it comes to...
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