Saturday 29 January 2011

Unison Socialist Party Members Vindicated

The press statement below from the Socialist Party is very good news. There is a long and sorry tradition of bureaucratic proscriptions and bans being used against "undesirables" in our movement. The court judgement against Unison could mean their day is done:

At a time when 150,000 council workers are facing redundancy and another 100,000 have been told they will be sacked if they don’t accept cuts in their pay and conditions UNISON members would rightly expect that every minute and every penny of union resources be spent on fighting the cuts.

However, UNISON’s leadership have spent three years and tens of thousands of pounds witch-hunting some of its most effective fighters. Today an Employment Tribunal has ruled that campaign of bullying to be unlawful. All of the trumped up charges against the four UNISON activists and Socialist Party members – Glenn Kelly, Brian Debus, Onay Kasab and Suzanne Muna – were thrown out. UNISON is now required to reinstate all four to their positions in the union including Glenn Kelly being put back on the National Executive of the union.

UNISON members will be lobbying the National Executive on 8 February to demand that this is immediately carried out.

2 comments:

Chris said...

Being a UNISON member I am puzzled why we are not doing more as a union to oppose these cuts. In fact in my workplace the union is acceding to cuts in pay and conditions, but these are for one year only. So the budget problem does not go away but is simply put on hold. I have been informed this is in the hope that the coalition will fall and New Labour will return to power. A sort of delaying tactic. Which got me thinking, is the union taking orders from the anti worker New Labour, is Ed Miliband running scared of the press and accusations that the unions got him into power?

Phil said...

I don't think Unison are taking orders from Labour tops.

Their behaviour now and while Labour was in government struck me as 'working toward' the leadership. They see the opinion polls with low positive views of trade unions. They fear tarring Labour with the media fall out of industrial action. Hence why the leadership are so feeble and craven.

That's the only explanation that makes any sort of sense.