A COACHLOAD of sacked Gate Gourmet workers is lobbying the TGWU’s Biennial Conference in Brighton this morning.
They are currently taking forward a large number of cases for racial discrimination against Gate Gourmet despite the fact that the TGWU has withdrawn its legal support for their claim.
In the Generic Grounds For Claim, in which the TGWU put itself forward as the 1st claimant, Gate Gourmet’s deputy manager for the UK and Ireland, Eric Born, is said to have stated ‘on or around the date of the dismissal that the Respondent (Gate Gourmet) no longer wished to work with the Asian Community’.
Now the TGWU leaders, after making the claim, are running away from it.
TGWU solicitors informed the sacked workers that if they went forward with the case for racial discrimination they would have to face Gate Gourmet demands for penalty payments and costs, without any union support.
This refusal to fight followed on from the TGWU decision that it would not support any appeal against the reserved judgement of the Employment Tribunal on a preliminary point. This was that the gathering in the canteen, after the management had brought in 160 replacement workers, was an unofficial strike.
The sacked workers are determined to carry forward the claim for racial discrimination against the company.
They believe that they are fighting this case on behalf of every TGWU member and are looking to the TGWU Biennial Conference delegates to give them full support.
They are also campaigning for their dispute to be made official, and for their hardship pay which was stopped in January 2006 to be resumed.
They also want an inquiry into the £600,000 hush money which was paid to two shop stewards, by the TGWU. They had been sacked after taking part in the secondary action by TGWU baggage handlers in support of the locked-out workers.
The £600,000 was paid as part of a deal that none of the details of the union involvement in the Gate Gourmet struggle would be revealed.
The sacked workers are demanding a TGWU inquiry into the deal and the publication of all of the documents involved.
The sacked workers are holding a public meeting at 12.30 pm today at the Quality Hotel, West Street Brighton.
