Strike Busting Union Boss Picked A Fight With The WRONG PEOPLE!

Right, so how a mighty trade union has fallen and even more sadly the one I happen to belong to, but it really is something when a trade union strike busts it’s own staff and then pleads misogyny as the motivation of said staff for their protesting, when it is nothing of the sort, if anything misogyny from the top has come about instead, hounding women out of work, a story of cronyism at the top, a matter that is now ending up in court, bullying, insecure contracts, failure to negotiate and the employment of a known sexual predator. Yet here we are with the Unite Union of Sharon Graham. It is an absolute mess conducting itself in a manner that is the complete opposite of how a trade union should be conducting itself and scandal after avoidable scandal has erupted.
Right, so There’s been a flurry of activity amongst Unite workers over the last few days, members of Unite’s Bargaining Disputes Services Unit, or BDSU took strike action on Monday, these are Unite’s own staff, being supported by their representative trade union, which of course can’t be their own employer, the union they actually work for, they are represented by GMB. This is a dispute that has been going since March, which Unite’s senior management have not dealt with, staff at that point trying to raise serious issues of bullying, insecure employment, and the undercutting of pay and conditions within the BDSU department. These are things you might be looking at and thinking, hang on, this is all stuff that trade unions are supposed to fight against right? And you’d be absolutely right and Unite will be representing their own members in their employment to combat such actions, but under Sharon Graham’s leadership at Unite, that same courtesy doesn’t appear to extend to their own staff, because by June, instead of listening to the issues being raised, two members of the BDSU staff got suspended, being referred to as ringleaders and threatened with consequences if they didn’t stop trying to raise concerns. Where Unite management appears to have made the claim these two were suspended for harassment, no evidence has ever been presented to support what the BDSU themselves are calling a smear and in a show of how important they considered this course of action as opposed to something you might consider a lot more serious, that suspension came the day after their collective grievance to the Unite bosses was submitted, yet a week before the issue of the employment of an individual that is claimed to be a known sexual predator was raised and no action had been taken on that at all.
The BDSU department are researchers, it is a research role and in Unite, there is a standard for pay and conditions for such a role, yet in Unite, these people are on insecure, fixed term contracts and are on a pay grade some three grades below other researchers in other departments within the union.
Of course before any dispute could begin, members of the GMB Union within the BDSU department had to ballot for any action they wished to take. Cue Unite’s next attempt to fight off their own workers. Nearly half of those GMB members being balloted joined on the eve of the ballot and it’s been alleged that they consisted of management and self-employed contractors in what turned out to be a transparent attempt to undermine the dispute, because those involved had their memberships suspended following their actions, suspended because they were engaged in a campaign of intimidation against GMB reps.
All of this is impacting upon the work the union is supposed to do for it’s members. Instead of supporting them, the union is wastes vast swathes of their dues, on fighting their own employees, even deploying senior staff to protest against their strike action. A literal counter demonstration was held to face off against their own workers, consisting of management, instead of said management doing the work of the union.
You couldn’t make it up, but one of those managers at the counter demonstration was Tayra Lopes-Lister who is the literal director of organising and leverage at Unite, all stood at their counter demo behind big fat banners reading ‘Sexist GMB: Stop Defending Harrassment of Women Staff’
Ah so it’s all about misogyny is it now? How is that? Is it because Sharon Graham is a woman? That’s an accusation that has been made a time or two, isn’t it, but a GMB spokesperson for their members set the record straight with a statement, saying:
‘Our members are sending a clear message that they will not tolerate the toxic bullying culture and victimisation they have experienced at Unite. We have consistently seen underhand tactics used to undermine these workers’ legitimate concerns and their right to pursue industrial action.
Most recently we have even seen GMB branch meetings monitored, names of attendees recorded, and unsolicited emails sent to them to try and undermine the strike action.
Today they were met by a counter-protest, in yet another attempt to intimidate them. This is a further example of the culture they are challenging.
We again call on Unite to suspend the managers accused of bullying behaviour, rescind the punitive suspensions of BDSU staff, and get around the table to resolve this dispute.’
Yes, about that bullying behaviour, about standing up for women, about sexism, because one figure I haven’t yet mentioned would be the BDSU departments boss, a guy called Jack Clarke. You might not have heard of the guy, but Unite members damn well have, he’s Sharon Graham’s husband.
He's been described as a sexist bully who has driven four women out of the department already. Clarke was on a final warning within Unite for his own conduct, bullying and misogyny, including incidents that had been recorded and transcribed by victims, yet he was then promoted to run the very unit that had been investigating him and despite such appointments requiring the assent of the Unite executive committee, they being required to vet any prospective candidates and approve the final candidate, this was never done, he simply got given the gig. Changes were then made where Clarke apparently hand picked those to work in the BDSU under him and loyalty to Sharon Graham as Gen Sec was a requirement of employment. That these are the people who have taken strike action, should speak volumes of the way Graham and Clarke have run Unite.
Fundamentally all of this comes down to a matter not just of ill treatment of employees by an organisation who’s sole remit is to stand up to those being oppressed by their employers, but a matter of optics too, because if you boil all of this down, you get the impression that this is all about Sharon Graham and her husband using union time and money to protect themselves.
And above all else where it is a Union’s primary objective to resolve disputes, here we have a dispute caused and being driven still it seems by the very people running this one.
It’s driving people to leave the union and you can understand that, but every person leaving is in my mind just helping Graham to remain in post when she has to stand for election again, rather than being able to get behind another hopefully better candidate, be they man or woman and if you haven’t voted for a union General Secretary before, because you figure it doesn’t matter, that you don’t care, this is what happens. You get candidates who aren’t working for people like you in your dispute if you find yourself in that position, but a Gen Sec who is wasting your dues protecting their own interests. A bad union leader is no different to a bad politician, but just like bad politicians, we can vote them out.
Graham’s political positions have been little better than her union ones for that matter as well, what exactly is her problem with Palestine for instance? Get the details of that story in this video recommendation here as your suggested next watch and please do like, share and subscribe to the channel to support it if you haven’t already done so it is very much appreciated and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.