‘Speakers from around the world will join the May Day March for Workplace Justice,’ said the TUC yesterday.
Top trade unionists from South Africa and Australia will join London Mayor Ken Livingstone and UK trade union leaders at the May Day March for Workplace Justice jointly organised by the TUC and the London May Day Organising Committee.
Greg Combet of the Australian Council of Trade Unions will tell marchers about the campaign in Australia against the Howard government’s plan to restrict employee rights.
Maria Helena Andre, Deputy General Secretary of the European TUC, and Randall Howard, the general secretary of the South African Transport and Allied Workers’ Union, and an executive member of COSATU will also speak.
The march has been backed by the TUC’s General Council as part of its campaign for a Trade Union Freedom Bill and for workplace justice.
It will assemble on Clerkenwell Green at noon on Monday 1 May and march to a rally in Trafalgar Square.
Speakers will include London Mayor, Ken Livingstone; Gloria Mills, TUC President; Brendan Barber, TUC General Secretary; Tony Woodley, TGWU General Secretary; Maria Helena Andre, ETUC; Randall Howard, SATAWU; Greg Combet, ACTU; Dave Prentis, Unison; Derek Simpson, Amicus; Paul Kenny, GMB and Tony Benn.
TUC General Secretary, Brendan Barber, said, ‘The mass dismissals at Gate Gourmet show our laws do not meet international standards of protecting people at work from exercising their basic rights.
‘Unions are campaigning for a Trade Union Freedom Bill because it is time industrial relations law lifted bureaucratic burdens on unions, protected people exercising their rights from employer victimisation and caught up with modern company structures.
‘This march is a key part of the campaign for workplace justice.’
Many workers will want to ask Brendan Barber and TGWU leader Tony Woodley just what they did to ‘protect’ the 800 locked out Gate Gourmet workers.
In fact, both leaders organised a deal with Gate Gourmet agreeing to 144 compulsory redundancies and hundreds of voluntary redundancies.
They agreed that before any workers could be reengaged, all the locked-out workers would have to sign a Compromise Agreement.
This meant giving up their right to go to an industrial tribunal or take other legal action against the company, and also agreeing that they would never seek work with Gate Gourmet or any company associated with Gate Gourmet again, and that any workers who were reengaged would work under the company’s survival plan.
Gate Gourmet paid tribute to the role that TUC general secretary Barber played in getting their deal agreed by the TGWU.
On September 28th 2005, when Gate Gourmet announced that it had done a deal with the TGWU it complimented Barber.
Eric Born, Managing Director of Gate Gourmet UK & Ireland, said: ‘After weeks of constructive negotiations, I am pleased the union leadership has ultimately accepted our suggested path for a resolution to this dispute.
‘As we have said all along, we are happy to consider re-engaging some of the workers dismissed for staging an illegal walkout.
‘The speed at which we will be able to do this depends on when the union gains the approval of its membership for the agreed proposals, and on the completion of the necessary compromise agreements.
‘This process could have been simpler had the illegal wildcat action on 10th August been renounced by the union, and therefore considered “unofficial”.
‘Gate Gourmet thanks Brendan Gold for agreeing to the proposals, and Brendan Barber for his unwavering support and assistance throughout the negotiation process. We look forward to continuing to strengthen our newfound relationship with the union at Heathrow.’
Richard Wells, the vice-chair of Gate Gourmet Human Resources Europe said recently that he credited TUC general secretary Brendan Barber with brokering Gate Gourmet’s eventual deal with the TGWU.
He said ‘Barber’s was a most helpful intervention and he was able to do what Acas couldn’t.’
However, hundreds of workers refused to sign the Compromise Agreement, and are fighting for their jobs back on their old terms and conditions.
They have now had their hardship pay stopped by the TGWU leaders.
Police officers seeking to ban their picket of the company, and threatening to arrest them, said that they had been told by Gate Gourmet and the TGWU that the dispute was over.
Trade unionists will not take too kindly to Barber and Woodley making political capital out of the way that the Gate Gourmet workers were locked out, when they stabbed these same workers in the back, in their rush to make a ‘sweetheart’ deal with the US company.
• Second news story
BILLIONS GOING INTO THE POCKETS OF PRIVATEERS
UNISON head of health Karen Jennings yesterday rejected a claim that large amounts of government ‘investment’ in the NHS was being swallowed up by wages, saying instead that ‘huge amounts’ of NHS cash was going into the pockets of privateers.
Jennings was answering health secretary Patricia Hewitt, who claimed when announcing a new two-tier ratings system for hospitals: ‘It’s been clear for a while that Agenda for Change and the new GP contracts are all costing us rather more than we anticipated.’
UNISON’s Jennings said: ‘That’s unfair. We’ve actually kept within the Bill, in relation to the negotiations we’ve had around staff funding.
‘What we’ve got to look at is the constant policy change and disruption and the huge sums of money that have gone to the private sector.
‘Look at Patricia Hewitt’s announcement on the day that the Labour government was re-elected. £5 billion has gone to the independent sector treatment centres.
‘And then we’ve got a whole new market being created, huge transactional costs, millions of pounds being spent on (financial) consultants.’
Jennings added that the government had introduced more competition into the NHS and ‘featherbeds’ the private sector.
She said: ‘We’ve now got independent sector treatment centres who are paid money but do not have to fulfil the number of procedures that have been required.
‘That’s not something that could happen in the NHS at all.’
