When 12 activists are suspended at the same time, members would hope that the Union would pull out all the stops to defend them.
If management need evidence from an accused activist, they will call the accused to a fact finding interview. If management have already got all the evidence they think they need, they will call the accused to a hearing. Independent legal advice should be provided to activists before any fact findings or hearings. The CWU should have provided each of the Burslem accused with access to legal advice from the moment they were suspended, either through a CWU appointed lawyer or through a lawyer of their own choice.
We need to look at the role that Labour Party activists, especially councillors, play in Trade Unions in the UK.
Members like effective reps. It seems that some powerful union officials don't. A lot of councillors see their role as protecting professional council employees from the public and they translate this to their union activity and see their union role as protecting managers from the criticism of members.The Labour Party doesn't seem to want to help ordinary workers. The Labour Party tries to position itself as the political home for all those with regional accents even if they hold the most Thatcherite views and don't give a monkey's about anyone but themselves.
The story of Yunus Bakhsk and Elizabeth Twist shows that the public sector are willing to spend over a million pounds just to neutralise an effective rep:
"Yunus Bakhsh a psychiatric nurse from the North East has won a four year battle for unfair dismissal against his former employer Northumberland Tyne and Wear NHS trust. Yunus had a twenty three year unblemished record in nursing. His employer colluded with his own union Unison to get rid of him.
Yunus was a SWP member and a union activist, he was joint branch secretary of Unison North of Tyne health group. In the weeks before his suspension he had angered management by publicising their large salary increases at the same time as leading a campaign against closure of a local care home.
In September 2006 he was suspended, with management initially refusing to give any clear reasons. They soon claimed they were acting on anonymous allegations of bullying and intimidation made against him. Staff were encouraged to come and make statements against him without proper representation or support.
In January 2007 the very organisation he was relying on for support Unison suspended him from the union claiming use of the union branch office for Socialist Worker Party activities. Unison later raided the office. Whilst on suspension he worked out two of his accusers were fellow union activists, husband and wife Peter and Kerry Cafferty. The allegations that led to his suspension relate to his conduct at staff representative meetings and not as a nurse. As three health trusts were merging Yunus could have been head of the largest health branch in the UK.
Under investigation from his employer and the union he had been so active in he sank into depression. The disciplinary proceedings dragged on for another twenty one months. At the same time as fighting to keep his job he applied to the certification officer against his union suspension, he was denied full access to the allegations made against him. At the certification hearing he had to represent himself, Unison used its member’s money to hire a barrister instructed by the firm Thompson’s usually used to support members. He was too ill to attend his final disciplinary hearing in June 2008, despite doctors asking for an adjournment he was dismissed in his absence. Determined not to give up he had to seek his own legal representation and support from fringe meetings at union conferences and left wing events.
In January 2009 a friend introduced him to Facebook. He looked at the Facebook pages of one of his accusers Kerry Cafferty. Kerry was a member of groups such as “No More asylum seekers in Britain”, “Make Britain Great Again”. Kerry and her husband Peter who was Unison Chair of Health Northern region, regional auditor and labour link officer, were both pictured seig-heiling. He managed to gain access to Nazi website Stromfront, here he got to the bottom of how he had been stitched up. He found postings relating to himself from September 2006 telling of the allegations that were soon to come. Further they had PDF files of anti BNP leaflets the Unison branch was planning to distribute. During his suspension Yunus’s home was daubed with racist graffiti and his windows broken. He was clearly hated by local BNP as in 2005 he had got a BNP member sacked, a posting in October 2005 was looking for dirt on Yunus.
In the meantime the branch had been closed down those who tried to rally support for Yunus were openly shouted down by union officials, members had no real representation and management began imposing petty changes.
At his Employment Tribunal in August 2010 he won a claim for unfair dismissal, he also won a claim for disability discrimination as the hearing had gone ahead without him. The tribunal found him a straightforward and credible witness. The trust’s head of Human Resources Elizabeth Latham was deemed not credible. Unknown to Yunus she had met with senior unison regional officer Elizabeth Twist to discuss Yunus. The tribunal questioned whether Latham had “found in Twist and Unison an ally and a shared sense of purpose to remove the claimant”. Damages have yet to be decided.
This extraordinary and at times outrageous battle shows up blatant collusion between a union and employer to both rid themselves of an activist. Unison’s anti-racist credentials are surely in tatters if they allow far-right activists to infiltrate senior positions and sabotage the union’s anti-fascist work. After the tribunal Yunus called on Unison to allow an independent investigation into his union suspension. To date Unison’s website only gives a brief statement on the matter."
http://www.freedompress.org.uk/news/201 ... or-racism/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Damages were awarded:
"With only days to go before a judicial review into the sacking of former mental health worker Yunus Bakhsh, NHS bosses at the Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust have agreed an out of court settlement with the troublesome regional organiser of the trotskyite communist Socialist Workers' Party (SWP) and former Unison trade union activist who was sacked from his job in June 2008.
The settlement will see the NHS Trust pay out £200,000, plus costs, which when added to the £105,000 already due to Bakhsh in compensation from an earlier Employment Tribunal settlement, and the trust's legal fees of £283,000, which do not include its judicial review costs, mean the final total could excede £1 million."
http://www.civilliberty.org.uk/newsdeta ... ewsid=1588" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
How many Liz Twists are there in the CWU?
I think I'll pass on that one.