Victimised Rolls Royce shop steward Jerry Hicks has been forced to give up his fight for reinstatement.
Despite strong support at his Bristol workplace, and an interim employment tribunal finding that he had probably been dismissed for his union activity, Jerry Hicks received only lukewarm backing from his union Amicus.
Following a downbeat
by senior Amicus officials, members voted to accept a deal under which Jerry will be paid £100,000.
And those Rolls Royce workers who walked out on a nine-day strike in his support will receive two weeks' pay.
Jerry Hicks was elected to represent aerospace workers on the national executive of Amicus where he has been a consistent left critic of Amicus general secretary Alan Thornett The victimised Gate Gourmet workers have been stitched up by their union the Transport & general Workers Union.
While T&G leader Tony Woodley was praising the tremendous solidarity shown by the catering staff sacked from their jobs at London's Heathrow he preparing to endorse a settlement which left a third of them permanently sacked.
The deal, brokered by TUC general secretary Brendan Barber and recommended by the union, was accepted by an overwhelming majority at a mass meeting.
Under its terms 397 of the sacked workers will be given the option of re-employment or compensation. Another 172 had already said they did not want re-employment and would accept compensation. Derek Simpson.
Earlier this year he was removed from the union's general purposes and finance committee following his resistance to the union's disgraceful scabbing in the Wembley Stadium dispute. It seems likely that this affected the level of union support after his dismissal.
The outcome for Jerry Hicks 1s a further sign of the rightward drift of Amicus, under the leadership of the supposedly "left-wing" Derek Simpson, who recently saved the Labour leadership from defeat on union rights at the party's own national executive.
When he won a surprise election victory as general secretary three years ago, Derek Simpson pledged to put an end to the corruption and witch hunts which had characterised the former AEEU and MSF unions.
There is little sign of these
T&G
Reinstate
sacked Gate
Gourmet
workers
This leaves another 144 victimised workers who will be made compulsory redundant according to so-called object and measurable criteria".
The criteria will include their disciplinary and absenteeism records as well an anything else the managers can dredge up.
This list includes all of those whom the company has repeatedly said it would not re-employ, including the key trade union activists. promised reforms in practice.
Assistant general secretary Len Bayliss was recently suspended from office following allegations of a massive siphoning-off of union charitable donations.
Yet rather than fighting for a victimised shop-steward to be given back his job, or investigating the alleged theft of tens of thousands of pounds of members' money, Derek Simpson has been waging war against union
Three officials have been suspended on unspecified charges and escorted from union premises.
The unree are Jimmy Warne, chair of the broad left Unity Gazette network; Des Heemskerk, editor of the Unity Gazette Bulletin; and union's head of purchasing, Gazette supporter Cathie Willis. Although they do not yet face any formal charges, Simpson
What is more the 397 will only be re-hired once the 144 workers being permanently sacked sign statements agreeing not to launch unfair dismissal claims against Gate Gourmet.
If any refuse to sign, the reemployment of the others could be delayed until midDecember when this requirement lapses.
Tony Woodley called the dispute a bitter and historic one that must lead to changes in the law. He added:
I am pleased, however, that our shop stewards and members have accepted a settlement that will see the great majority of our members go back to work or take voluntary settlement. In reality the trade union organisation at Gate Gourmet has been broken -since a union which cannot detend its activists and reprehas apparently accused the three of leaking the documents about Len Bayliss to the campaigning website www.amicus.cc - an allegation denied by the website.
At the same time, Derek Simpson is busy tearing up union policy.
This year's conference passed a motion, fiercely opposed by officials, that in future all full-time officials would be elected rather than appointed.
But with the first new appointment following conterence DereK Simpson announced that a full-time official for the construction sector would be appointed.
Union members in construction have threatened not to cooperate with any official appointed rather than elected, and it is possible that there will be a complaint to the trade union certification officer.
It appears LOaL Derek Simpson is using the prosentatives is a union powerless in front of management.
True, Tony Woodley won a resolution at September's Labour Party conference endorsing the restoration of a form of secondary action.
This would have allowed other workers at the airport to take solidarity action legally in defence of Gate Gourmet workers.
But without action to back up the resolution, it will be simply ignored. In fact it was publicly thrown in the bin by New Labour even before it was voted on the by conference.
Backing up the resolution means the unions pulling out all the stops to support a section of workers when they are victimised under the antiunion laws - not starting to discuss compromises with management before the dispute has hardly got off the Jerry Hicks posed merger of Amicus, the TGWU and the GMB into a "super-union" as a pretext for abandoning union policy.
But lay activists do not want a union, however large and wealthy, which bails out a right-wing Labour leadership, ignores its own democratic procedures, turns a blind eye to allegations of corruption, witch-hunts its activists, and cannot even defend a member of its own national executive from dismissal for trade union activIty.
A merged union built on this basis would be an obstacle, not an asset, to the class struggle. ground as happened in the Gate Gourmet case.
It involves actually confronting the anti-union laws instead of complying with them.
It also means the unions withdrawing political support for New Labour rather than backing them to the hilt every time an election comes around and bank-rolling their campaign. Defeating the anti-union laws and building a political alternative to New Labour are two sides of the same coin.
New Labour can stand the occasional opposition resolution going through conterence on the back of the trade union block vote. What it could not stand would be the major trade unions actively looking for and building a political alternative to the big business based politics the party represents.