Politics
denies call-banking for Graham allies
The Unite union has been accused of using union resources to canvass support for general secretary Sharon Graham’s favoured candidates in elections for its executive council (EC). The union has denied involvement — but the denial missed, or deliberately ignored, the key point in the accusations.
Unite branch secretaries have been receiving calls to ask whether their branch has met to nominate candidates. Branch nominations play a key role in union elections and a significant number of nominations helps portray momentum for the nominated candidate.
All the calls, regardless of the branch’s location, have come from the same number — but the person calling gives a different name each time, suggesting a phone-banking operation.
Unite Union asked questions
Skwawkbox asked Unite:
Branch secretaries and others are receiving calls from 07309926817, asking them if their branch has voted yet in the EC elections and if so, who for — and promoting Sharon Graham’s preferred candidates. The line is the ‘need’ to ‘have the right people in place’.
The Phonely site classifies the number as a harasser based on feedback from recipients.
Questions:
• How do the phone-bankers have branch officials’ numbers?
• How does Unite justify what appears to be a GDPR breach?
• Why is Unite interfering in the election and spending members’ money promoting one set of candidates over another?
• Does this indicate SG is worried about the unpopularity of her preferred candidates?
Phonely, a digital voice services provider, reports that the number, at the time of writing, has only started to be reported in the last two days. In that time, more than sixty people have searched for 07309926817. Four people have complained about the number making unsolicited calls, classifying it as “harassing”:
Unusually, Unite responded directly rather than through its lawyers. Not unusually at all, it attempted to attack Skwawkbox for asking the question.
The union’s press office denied any involvement and tried to dismiss the issue as a ‘laughable smear’ and to claim that the calls were just “candidates and their supporters” trying to get support:
Another day, another laughable attempt to smear Unite from Skwawkbox. As you well know, the union does not provide money or contact data to anyone involved in internal elections. Candidates and their supporters on all sides will no doubt be campaigning, including using whatever contacts they have within their usual day to day networks, to speak with activists who are eligible to vote during the election.
However, despite being notified in the press enquiry that all the calls were from a single number, Unite did not address this — and it undermines the claim that the calls are coming from various people all contending for support.
Skwawkbox understands that several branch secretaries have already, or are preparing, formal complaints about the data breach. One Unite rep posted to Facebook that:
Different names, same number
Others have reported different names being given, but the same number.
Another wrote, in a thread about the issue:
The last set of EC elections was also marred by widespread ‘dark money’ — funded ads supporting the pro-Graham ‘slate’ of candidates. paid organisers loyal to Graham. Racist and allegedly ineligible candidates loyal to her were also allowed to stand.
Paid organisers — employed by Unite — were also found to be organising meetings and campaigns for the Graham slate of candidates. Union rules expressly forbid the use of paid staff for organising to elect ‘lay’ members of the EC and lay out who is allowed to do so:
6.2.1 Only members who are elected to represent workers will be eligible to participate in any body of the union, including any conferences, but with the exception of branch and workplace meetings (which all members can attend) and Area Activists Committees and Regional Labour Party Liaison Committees as specified elsewhere in these Rules…
6.3.2 The range of relevant elected office may be specified by Executive Council guidance in relation to specific rules, however in all cases where the representative has been elected under this guidance to the following roles, such representatives will count as ‘accountable representatives of workers’:
6.3.2.1 convenor
6.3.2.2 shop steward (or “workplace representative”/“father/motherof-the-chapel”, etc., where such phrases are the local colloquial term for such representative as represents members in
bargaining and disciplinary and grievance matters)6.3.2.3 health and safety representative
6.3.2.4 equalities representative
6.3.2.5 learning representative
6.3.2.6 environmental representative
6.3.2.7 branch secretary/treasurer/chair/equalities officer (where that branch officer is a paid employee of a company or organisation which is not Unite the Union), save with the specific permission of the Executive Council, (taking in to account their current employment).
6.3.2.8 appointment as an “accredited support companion” (aka “lay companion”) in itself would not confer the status of “accountable representative of workers”; to qualify an accredited support companion would also need to hold office as listed above.
A number of union officials made complaints about this misuse of resources. No action seems ever to have been taken against staff involved.
In 2025, Sharon Graham was accused of creating a highly-paid ‘ghost job’ for a potential rival to protect allies from an election challenge.
Unite Union — Graham’s record
Graham’s record in Unite is strewn with issues. In 2018, before she became Unite general secretary, she asked colleagues to destroy evidence of bullying and misogyny gathered by staff working under him in his previous role. Explosively, in December 2024, Graham’s lawyers admitted that, following her take-over, the union did destroy the evidence.
During Graham’s tenure as general secretary of Unite, she has been constantly surrounded by allegations of abuse and anti-union behaviour. This includes her conduct in yet another dispute by staff complaining about the behaviour of her husband and his allies.
BDSU staff working for her husband Jack Clarke have been in dispute with the union over alleged bullying and abuse by Clarke and his cronies. As already seen, these were far from the first such allegations against Clarke.
Staff have also accused Graham and her management team of employing intimidation, suspension and anti-union tactics against the staff in the dispute, outraging Unite’s National Industrial Sector Committee (NISC) for the print and graphics sector and the leaders of two unions representing Unite staff and officers.
Yet more allegations
So bad has this alleged conduct been that more than 90% of Unite staff working at the union’s Holborn HQ voted for strike action. Three — some say four — of the five women who worked in Clarke’s department since Graham formed it and put him in charge of it have left, with union sources saying that they also alleged bullying and abuse. The Unite union staff branch unanimously condemned Unite’s abuse of its staff and the influential Officers National Committee (ONC) has accused Graham of using Murdoch-esque anti-union tactics against workers and against Unite officers trying to unionise and take collective action.
And on the executive council, Graham’s allies used expensive lawyers and legal process to block the removal of the chair — a Graham factionalist whose handling of key issues led to him losing the confidence of many ‘exec’ members — a tactic the union has used repeatedly, at huge cost to members.
Graham stands for re-election as general secretary this year.
Featured image via Twitter