BLACKLISTING building giants should be put on a public services blacklist, along with tax dodgers, Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard said today.

He told the Scottish TUC Congress that companies that victimised thousands of trade unionists over decades “should be barred” from public contracts “until they own up, clean up and pay up in full.”

Mr Leonard used his address to blast the SNP’s record in government, saying the party had presided over a “decade of mediocrity and timidity.”

He warned: “We are moving backwards, to a landlord-tenant society.

“We continue to live by a master-servant relationship at work.”

Mr Leonard said nationalist sops to radicalism would not be enough to address the stark issues facing Scottish society.

He said the SNP’s claim to have record low levels of unemployment, trumpeted by leader Nicola Sturgeon in her own address to the STUC the day before, had been debunked by academic studies.

Real levels of unemployment were twice as high as the official rate, he claimed.

And he urged “not a public-sector bid” against privateers to run ScotRail, as the SNP has indicated, “but public ownership of our railways” and “not a public-sector bid but public ownership of our ferry services.”

Labour would also champion models of employee ownership of firms, he said.

The Scottish Labour leader argued that Labour north and south of the border was “starting to face the future with a renewed confidence.”

He told the hall: “It is a renewed confidence not just in our own abilities but it is a renewed confidence in working people to run their own affairs.

“There is nothing wrong with that old socialist maxim of from each according to their means, to each according to their need.”

He received a warm reception from delegates and observers — including former Labour turned SNP MP Jim Sillars, who was seen repeatedly clapping.

“The campaign of Jeremy Corbyn shows that people will not only respect principle, conviction and integrity in politics but they will also vote for it,” Mr Leonard said.

And he urged delegates to “seize the chance of a lifetime, because another world is possible — and it’s our job to create it.”

Prior to his speech, Mr Leonard addressed a rally against Royal Bank of Scotland closures outside the bank’s Aviemore branch.