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Sacked Belfast Airport Workers Committee Leaflet
22nd August 2007 |
VICTORY
OVER ICTS Statement from the sacked shop stewards, Gordon McNeill, Madan Gupta and Chris Boyer, representing the 23 sacked security workers in Belfast International Airport: We are shop stewards representing 23 workers who were sacked in 2002 for taking part in a strike against the poverty wages paid by our employer, international security company, ICTS. While it was ICTS, backed by Belfast International Airport, who took the decision to sack us, the responsibility for what happened rests also with our union, the T&GWU. ICTS were able to get away with sacking us only because our union official, acting entirely behind our backs, provided them with a letter repudiating our strike. We have fought a five-year battle against our employer and, in the course of this struggle, have won two crucial legal battles that have important repercussions for all trade unionists. Two ground breaking legal decision were made in our favour that can be used to strengthen the hand of shop stewards and other trade unionists in taking action against their employers. They put a serious dent in the Thatcherite anti trade union laws. These decisions are: 1. That shop stewards have the right to suspend industrial action and then recommence it on any already notified days without giving any prior notice to their employer that they intend to do so. 2. That we, as shop stewards and union activists, were sacked because of our trade union opinions and socialist political beliefs. This means that shop stewards who are victimised and sacked can take a case of political discrimination, rather than an unfair dismissal case, against their employer. We won this battle without any assistance from our union and at great personal cost to ourselves and our families. Our legal bill to date comes to £200,000. After five years we feel we have come to the end of the road in our attempt to get our union to correct the injustice that they have done to us and to back us. Letters we sent to General Secretary, Tony Woodley and other senior T&GWU officials at the end of our Industrial Tribunal hearings asking for meetings to resolve our differences were not even acknowledged. We have therefore decided to embark on a hunger strike in Transport House in London. We have two demands: a) That the T&GWU/Unite set up an independent inquiry, with a panel acceptable to us, to examine their handling of our dispute from 2002 until the present, in order that every member of this union can draw the lessons. b) That the T&GWU/Unite meet our legal and other expenses in recognition of the important victory that we have won for all trade unionists. The responsibility for what now happens rests firmly with General Secretary, Tony Woodley, and the rest of the senior leadership of our union. Please support our case. Phone, email or write to Tony Woodley demanding that he concedes our demands. Move a motion through your branch/ shop stewards committee backing us. The facts in more detail Following protracted and fruitless pay negotiations with ICTS, we convinced our union to conduct a ballot for industrial action early in 2002. The ballot resulted in a massive 97% of our 140 members voting for strike action. We notified ICTS of the days we intended to strike, all with the official backing of the T&GWU. When the company offered negotiations we suspended the action in good faith to allow the talks to take place. It soon became clear that the negotiations were going nowhere, so we reinstated the action from the first shift on Tuesday 14 May. It was at this point that what should have been a straightforward industrial dispute escalated into a protracted and bitter battle. Shortly after we went on strike we discovered that the T&GWU official responsible for the airport, Joe McCusker acting on instructions from the then General Secretary, Bill Morris, had repudiated the strike; this despite having, a few hours earlier assured us that we had the full backing of the union. The union repudiation gave ICTS a green light to sack us. They selected twenty three of the forty four who had been on strike, making sure that the shop stewards and most active union members were all sacked. For five years we, as the shop stewards
who led the original strike, have
picketed, protested and lobbied
demanding that our union explain
why they abandoned us when we
took strike action and that they come
behind us in our battle with ICTS.
We twice had to resort to hunger During this time we have been not
only been verbally abused, we have
received death threats against our
families and ourselves. We want the
origin of these threats to be a matter Despite all this pressure the T&GWU leadership have failed to support us. Bill Morris was general secretary when we were sacked and, despite verbal assurances that he would take up our case, nothing was done under his stewardship to redress the injustice that had been done to us. The current general secretary, Tony Woodley also gave us assurances that he would put the weight of the union behind us. Sadly, Tony Woodley's only contribution, made shortly after he took up office, was to negotiate a rotten deal with ICTS. This amounted to an offer of paltry compensation (minus benefits) to the sacked workers in return for dropping all cases against ICTS. Only six of the sacked workers were to be offered their jobs back. ICTS also made clear that none of the shop stewards would ever work at the airport again. We refused to be browbeaten by Tony Woodley who told us we had no legal case - not even a case for unfair dismissal - and that we should accept this as a good deal in the circumstances. When we put this "deal" to the twenty three sacked workers they rejected it unanimously. The union then completely washed its hands of us. We had no choice but to pursue our legal case against ICTS on our own. For low paid workers including some who have been blacklisted and have not worked since the strike, this was a huge undertaking. ICTS have deliberately
drawn out the legal action in
order to bump up the costs,
hoping that our limited
finances would force us to
drop the case. We were only
able to proceed by putting Our Industrial Tribunal case concluded in June this year. On 12 June we wrote to Tony Woodley and to the senior officials in Ireland asking for "Without Prejudice" discussions to try to sort out our differences. Our letter argued that, if we won our case, this victory could be used by the union to encourage workers to join. We said that we should try to settle our past differences so that we could present a common face to the media concentrating on the importance of this victory. We never received so much as an acknowledgement, let alone a reply, to what we considered was a reasonable way to resolve this longstanding issue. This is why we have resorted to the extreme tactic of a hunger strike and are absolutely determined to see this to a conclusion no matter what the consequences. We are not doing this to attack or try to discredit our union but to defend and promote genuine trade unionism. Please support us. Contact us at: |