Sacked Belfast ShopStewards On line Petition

[malcolj]

Description/History:
Unite in Shame
http://gopetition.co.uk/petitions/justice-for-sacked-belfast-airport-workers.html
Betyayed and lied to by our union – we demand justice now!

Sacked Belfast airport shop stewards Gordon McNeill, Madan Gupta and Chris Bowyer say:

We are on demanding justice from the leadership of our union, UNITE.

Six years ago we went on strike for a 50p an hour pay rise.

Our union official, backed by the leadership of the union, colluded with our employer, ICTS, to have 24 of us sacked.

We were told by the union that we had no case against the company.

We took our own case – and won!

As a result we have been left with crippling legal bills. Our homes are now on the line as we are faced with debts we can never pay.

We have faced paramilitary death threats against us and our families, warning us to drop this issue or else!

We will not walk away. We are demanding that the union pay our legal bills and compensate us for the hardship their actions have put ourselves and our families through.

Four times in the last eight months the Unite leadership has promises to pay the legal bills and make an offer of compensation but failed each time to stick to their word.

We were on hunger and thirst strike in April, but suspended this action after five days because the Union leadership again promised to pay our legal bills and offer compensation and to do so by 30 April.

They have reneged on this. No offer has been made. The legal bills are still not paid.

Instead they have moved the goalposts and are now saying that any offer they make to us will be subject to strings. Their first condition is that we issue a statement saying that the General Secretary, Tony Woodley and the Irish Regional Secretary, Jimmy Kelly, have acted “honourably” in this dispute.

We are suggesting instead that there be a full public inquiry into what the union leadership have done over the six years of the dispute so that Unite members can judge for themselves.

We appeal to every Unite member, and to all trade unionists, to support us by contacting Tony Woodley and Jimmy Kelly and demand that they stick by the commitments they have already made.

Then let us all Unite to build a strong union that can defend us against the attack on on services, on jobs, on wages and on conditions.

 

[Macullam]

PRESS RELEASE - Thursday 15th May 2008

PRESS RELEASE - Thursday 15th May 2008
SACKED AIRPORT WORKERS
RECOMMENCE PROTEST AT TRANSPORT HOUSE

For Immediate Release



Unite leadership go back on their promises to pay legal fees and compensate the sacked shop stewards.



"We have learned that nothing the Unite leadership say can be trusted. Every member of the union would do well to note the way we have been lied to and fobbed off" Gordon McNeill



The three sacked airport shop stewards who called off a week long hunger and thirst strike on 11 April, after they received assurances from their union, Unite, that commitments made to them last September would be met, have resumed protest action at Transport House. In a repeat of the action that last month led to the union calling the police to remove the protestors, Gordon McNeill this morning occupied the awning at the front of the building. Madan Gupta and Chris Bowyer have said they will take his place if the union has him arrested.



The previous hunger strike ended with a promise from the union that they would pay the outstanding legal bill for the long court action taken by the sacked workers against their former employer, ICTS. Unite also said that they would make an offer of compensation to the shop stewards for the hardship which the actions of the union leadership had put them through. All this was to have been done by 30 April.



The 30 April deadline passed without any movement by the Unite leadership on any of these issues. Instead, on 8 May, the shop stewards received a letter from the union solicitor which went back on all the previous promises that had been made.



On four occasions over the last eight months the Unite leadership gave firm guarantees that they will pay the legal bills and offer compensation. Their latest letter revokes all these promises. All it offers is to continue discussions which have already dragged on for years. For the first time it introduces strings and conditions on any offer. In a recent meeting with the shop stewards, Unite Irish Regional Secretary, Jimmy Kelly, made clear that, as a precondition for any settlement, he wanted a letter from the shop stewards exonerating himself and current General Secretary, Tony Woodley, for their role in the dispute.



Faced with this double dealing and intransigence the shop stewards can only conclude that the Unite leadership have never had any intention of resolving this dispute and have been stringing them along with false promises. They have therefore decided to begin an escalating campaign of public protest action to force the union leadership to stand by their earlier promises.



Gordon McNeill today explained his decision:



"I have been left with no choice but to begin a campaign of protest action to expose the treacherous and dismissive treatment we have received at the hands of Tony Woodley and other senior Unite officials. I intend to begin with an occupation of Transport House and, if the union leadership still refuse to act in a reasonable manner and grant our demands, will escalate my action to a hunger and thirst strike. My two colleagues, Madan Gupta and Chris Bowyer, will be supporting me in this.



The union leadership has gone back on every promise they made to us. They have lied to us and to the public. For example when we started our hunger and thirst strike in April they immediately issued a statement to the press saying that our legal bills had been paid and that this was no longer an issue of dispute. This was a blatant lie.



"Our legal bill has still not been paid; the union has had no further discussions with our solicitor over this. There is no commitment in their 8 May letter to ever pay it.



"I have had enough of all this deception. We can only conclude that Tony Woodley has no intention of giving us justice. This can only be because he does not want the full truth about his role to ever come out. He clearly wants to cover up the fact that he told us we had no legal case and tried to bully us into accepting a rotten deal that he negotiated with ICTS.



"We have also faced paramilitary death threats. Two of us were bundled into a van at gunpoint and told to walk away from the dispute or else. We have alleged evidence that at least some of this intimidation was organised from within Transport House and have passed this evidence on to the police.



"We won't sign any letters exonerating Tony Woodley and Jimmy Kelly. What we need is not a whitewash of the role of Unite leaders but a full investigation into what they have done so that every member of the union is fully informed about what has been going on.



"I regret once again having to engage in public protest action against my union leadership. I would far rather be joining with them in helping to build the union. But their on going intransigence leaves me with no choice. The actions of union officials in getting me sacked and refusing to support our legal action against our employer, ICTS, have left me with debts I can never afford to pay. It makes no difference to well paid full time officials how long this dispute drags on. But every week and month that passes I go further into debt and it is my family and especially my children who suffer.


"I know that it will be difficult to shift a leadership who are obviously determined to endlessly spin this out in the hope that we will eventually just go away. That is why we are appealing to fellow trade unionists to help us by contacting the Unite leaders and demanding that they fulfill the promises they made to us in September, and then repeated in January, and twice in April. We will not be ending this protest unless and until they do."

END

Fintan Canavan, the Solicitor who has been involved in negotiating with the union, and who can confirm that they have reneged on the commitments they gave to end the April hunger strike, can be contacted at 028 9024 5471

Issued by Gordon McNeill, Madan Gupta and Chris Bowyer 15th May 2008

Gordon McNeill can be contacted at 07934632366

 

[dennisr]

Union 'leader' bastards

 

[Macullam]

SWP leadership’s shameful role

SWP leadership’s shameful role

THE UNITE leadership are not the only people who should hang their heads in shame following the airport workers’ protest. The leadership of the Socialist Workers Party should join them.

During the week of the hunger strike, SWP members were nowhere to be seen. This was hardly surprising since it was one of their members, Unite Regional Secretary, Jimmy Kelly, who was responsible for the union’s intransigent stance.

Rather than help build support for the shop stewards, leading SWP members, when challenged, were saying in private that they supported the stance of the union.

Perhaps realising that this position would not stand up in public they attempted to save face by issuing a last minute public statement, put out on the Friday, just hours before the union caved in.

On the surface this put a “neutral” position, calling on the workers to end the hunger strike and also calling on Unite to talk to them. Sadly for the SWP the idea that in a bitter struggle such as this there is a comfort zone of “neutrality” and “reasonableness” is just an abstraction.

In truth the SWP statement is nothing more than an attempt to provide a left cover for the actions of the Unite leadership. Scandalously, it repeats verbatim the slanderous misinformation issued by the union at the start of the week. It “welcomes the fact that the present leadership of UNITE (the successors of ATGWU) has agreed to meet the full legal costs of the tribunal case that the airport activists undertook.”

With the legal costs issue thus neatly put to the side it goes on to declare that: “The current dispute between the workers and their union concerns the issue of compensation for further campaign costs and hardship endured.”

What is this but a regurgitation of the slur contained in the union’s statements that all the shop stewards were interested in was compensation? As the shop stewards repeatedly pointed out in the period leading up to and during the hunger strike, the most important issue for them was the legal costs.

If, as the SWP assert, the legal issue was resolved, why were the union and shop stewards’ solicitors discussing and trying to resolve this issue right up to and after the time the SWP statement was issued?

Of course the Unite leadership, during the hunger strike, did claim that the legal costs would be paid, but they had been saying this since the previous September, when they had also promised to make a compensation offer within seven days. The hunger strike was because they had failed to fulfil these commitments. For the shop stewards, verbal promises given one day and broken the next would no longer suffice.

Seven months on, and five days into a debilitating hunger strike, the SWP were calling on the workers to end their action in return for yet more verbal assurances on the costs and with nothing at all on the table on compensation. In other words they should call off their protest for less than they had been offered in September!
The SWP statement is as revealing for what it leaves out as for what it contains. It makes no mention of the decision by Jimmy Kelly to call the police to forcibly evict the shop stewards.

In other circumstances the SWP would be louder than most in denouncing such police involvement. Has their position on this now changed? Or is it justified to use the police in this way only when it is a member of the SWP who makes the call?

 

[poster342002]

Sadly, none of this surprises me. The strikers will, no doubt, be called "anti-union", "right wing" and the like before long.

 

[Macullam]

CWI update

Northern Ireland

The three sacked airport shop stewards who called off a week long hunger and thirst strike on 11 April, after they received assurances from their union, Unite, that commitments made to them last September would be met, have resumed protest action. They issued the following press release on on 15 May 2008.

Background information: leaflet, statement (both pdfs).
Sacked airport workers recommence protest at Unite union Belfast offices

Urgent protests needed!
socialistworld.net
Unite leadership go back on their promises to pay legal fees and compensate the sacked shop stewards

“We have learned that nothing the Unite leadership say can be trusted. Every member of the union would do well to note the way we have been lied to and fobbed off”, Gordon McNeill

The three sacked airport shop stewards who called off a week long hunger and thirst strike on 11 April, after they received assurances from their union, Unite, that commitments made to them last September would be met, have resumed protest action at Transport House. In a repeat of the action that last month led to the union calling the police to remove the protestors, Gordon McNeill this morning occupied the awning at the front of the building. Madan Gupta and Chris Bowyer have said they will take his place if the union has him arrested.

The previous hunger strike ended with a promise from the union that they would pay the outstanding legal bill for the long court action taken by the sacked workers against their former employer, ICTS. Unite also said that they would make an offer of compensation to the shop stewards for the hardship which the actions of the union leadership had put them through. All this was to have been done by 30 April.

The 30 April deadline passed without any movement by the Unite leadership on any of these issues. Instead, on 8 May, the shop stewards received a letter from the union solicitor which went back on all the previous promises that had been made.

On four occasions over the last eight months the Unite leadership gave firm guarantees that they will pay the legal bills and offer compensation. Their latest letter revokes all these promises. All it offers is to continue discussions which have already dragged on for years. For the first time it introduces strings and conditions on any offer. In a recent meeting with the shop stewards, Unite Irish Regional Secretary, Jimmy Kelly, made clear that, as a precondition for any settlement, he wanted a letter from the shop stewards exonerating himself and current General Secretary, Tony Woodley, for their role in the dispute.

Faced with this double dealing and intransigence the shop stewards can only conclude that the Unite leadership have never had any intention of resolving this dispute and have been stringing them along with false promises. They have therefore decided to begin an escalating campaign of public protest action to force the union leadership to stand by their earlier promises.

Gordon McNeill today explained his decision:

“I have been left with no choice but to begin a campaign of protest action to expose the treacherous and dismissive treatment we have received at the hands of Tony Woodley and other senior Unite officials. I intend to begin with an occupation of Transport House and, if the union leadership still refuses to act in a reasonable manner and grant our demands, will escalate my action to a hunger and thirst strike. My two colleagues, Madan Gupta and Chris Bowyer, will be supporting me in this.

“The union leadership has gone back on every promise they made to us. They have lied to us and to the public. For example when we started our hunger and thirst strike in April they immediately issued a statement to the press saying that our legal bills had been paid and that this was no longer an issue of dispute. This was a blatant lie.

“Our legal bill has still not been paid; the union has had no further discussions with our solicitor over this. There is no commitment in their 8 May letter to ever pay it.

“I have had enough of all this deception. We can only conclude that Tony Woodley has no intention of giving us justice. This can only be because he does not want the full truth about his role to ever come out. He clearly wants to cover up the fact that he told us we had no legal case and tried to bully us into accepting a rotten deal that he negotiated with ICTS.

“We have also faced paramilitary death threats. Two of us were bundled into a van at gunpoint and told to walk away from the dispute or else. We have alleged evidence that at least some of this intimidation was organised from within Transport House and have passed this evidence on to the police.

“We won't sign any letters exonerating Tony Woodley and Jimmy Kelly. What we need is not a whitewash of the role of Unite leaders but a full investigation into what they have done so that every member of the union is fully informed about what has been going on.

“I regret once again having to engage in public protest action against my union leadership. I would far rather be joining with them in helping to build the union. But their on going intransigence leaves me with no choice. The actions of union officials in getting me sacked and refusing to support our legal action against our employer, ICTS, have left me with debts I can never afford to pay. It makes no difference to well paid full time officials how long this dispute drags on. But every week and month that passes I go further into debt and it is my family and especially my children who suffer.

“I know that it will be difficult to shift a leadership who are obviously determined to endlessly spin this out in the hope that we will eventually just go away. That is why we are appealing to fellow trade unionists to help us by contacting the Unite leaders and demanding that they fulfill the promises they made to us in September, and then repeated in January, and twice in April. We will not be ending this protest unless and until they do.”

Issued by Gordon McNeill, Madan Gupta and Chris Bowyer 15th May 2008

 

[Urbanblues]

Are there any links for this please?

 

[malcolj]

Are there any links for this please?

http://www.socialistworld.net/

 

[malcolj]

Open Letter

Dear Editor,

We the undersigned are deeply concerned at the ongoing unacceptable treatment of the sacked Belfast airport shop stewards by the leadership of Unite who have failed to pay the outstanding legal costs and compensation due to these workers.

These workers were sacked for going on strike demanding that their employer, ICTS, give them a 50 pence per hour pay rise. Evidence given at an Industrial Tribunal hearing showed that their full time union official co-operated with their employer to have them sacked.

They won an important legal victory for all workers when it was found that their sacking was political discrimination on grounds of their trade union opinions and socialist beliefs. They won this victory without support from their union and have been left with crippling legal costs.

Last September the Unite leadership agreed to pay the legal costs, including the costs of defending an appeal, and to compensate the shop stewards for the hardship they have suffered.

Eight months on and the legal costs remain unpaid. Not a penny in compensation has been offered.

They have fought for justice for the past 6 years at great financial and personal cost.
We call on the leadership of Unite to immediately meet the commitments they made to the sacked shop stewards last September. The trade union movement needs to embrace workers like the Belfast airport workers who are prepared to fight for working people at a time when wages and living standards are under attack, not push them away.

Yours truly,

 

[dennisr]

Hunger striking airport worker in critical condition

Press Release - issued by the sacked Belfast airport workers on 19 May 2008

* Hunger Strike by Belfast airport workers is the direct responsibility of Tony Woodley, the Unite joint general secretary
* Support from actor Ricky Tomlinson and playwright Jimmy McGovern

For the last five days, T&G shop steward and ex-airport worker Gordon McNeill has been on a hunger and liquid strike on the roof of the T&G headquarters in Belfast. Gordon’s condition is now critical and he will die unless the T&G leadership acts now to stop this tragedy.
Background

The protest is a result of the union’s past collaboration with the ICTS management at Belfast airport, which resulted in four shop stewards and 20 other workers being unfairly dismissed.

Last September, a Belfast employment tribunal ruled that these workers were unfairly sacked and blamed both the management and the local T&G official for bringing this about. The huge legal costs amounting to over £200,000 have been loaded on the shoulders of the four shop stewards whilst the union refused any responsibility. The tribunal ordered ICTS to pay damages, also over £200,000, but this sum has been frozen pending an appeal to the High Court by ICTS.

Because of these legal obstacles, the shop stewards are facing eviction from their homes and hugely indebted. The solicitors who acted for the workers have said they cannot act any further without these costs being met. A number of issues are involved but as a sign of good intent, the shop stewards have said that if the union pays off the outstanding legal fees, they will call off the protest.

Unfortunately, the shop stewards feel that they cannot trust the union without this concrete gesture. On four separate occasions, the union promised to settle but all of these promises have been reneged upon.

This is an extremely serious situation. Gordon has left instructions that if he is taken to hospital, he will refuse treatment as his human right. That would end in his death.

Ricky Tomlinson [former trade union activist and well-known actor] has said: “I have been on hunger strike myself and can fully sympathise with these workers.”

Playwright, Jimmy McGovern sent this message earlier: “Remember the way the TGWU betrayed Liverpool's dockers? I bet you thought no union could ever sink so low again. I did too. We were wrong. The way in which Unite has treated the Belfast Airport workers is a disgrace. Unite's leaders should hang their heads in shame."


http://www.socialistworld.net/eng/2008/05/19northa.html (+additional information)