Politics
Unite Union workers strike again over “toxic bullying culture”
Just over a year after Unite union staff first went on strike alleging a “toxic bullying culture” in the department run by general secretary Sharon Graham‘s husband Jack Clarke, Graham faces a new strike by union officers disgusted by the Unite management’s anti-union manoeuvres.
Unite officers, and the Community union they want to represent them at work, say they have faced underhanded “Murdoch anti-union tactics” from Unite as Graham and her coterie try — the irony! — to prevent them organising. In a statement about the strike ballot, the “Reunite the Union” group writes:
A little over a year since the first strike by Unite staff over a “toxic bullying culture,” Sharon Graham now faces a second industrial action ballot by Unite employees. As the union’s officers ballot for action over union recognition, it’s time to Reunite to end the toxicity and divisions which are forcing our own union’s employees into dispute.
In the wake of the strike action by the staff in November 2024, and the indicative ballot for wider staff action that followed, our union’s officers voted to join Community and establish their own branch.
Even in the complicated world of trade unionism within trade unions, where the employees of one trade union are represented by another, the principle is very clear. An independent union is a prerequisite for genuine collective bargaining and representation. The vote of the officers was followed by protracted recognition talks between Sharon Graham’s management team and the officers’ reps, now supported by Community.
Despite the new Community branch having the overwhelming support of the officers, Sharon Graham’s management team opted to also recognise an unofficial “Unite Officers Group” (UOG). While the UOG is a very small rump of officers, this is important because it is not an independent union. It is in effect a ‘staff association.’ This UOG group was then invited to participate in pay negotiations on an equal footing to Community (for Officers) and GMB (for staff).
Unscrupulous employers use bogus staff associations to undermine genuine collective bargaining by legitimate unions. The motivation of management to extend recognition to the UOG can be interpreted in different ways, but during the staff strike the GMB union was very clear that our union’s staff faced “underhand tactics” from Sharon Graham’s management team.
“We have consistently seen underhand tactics used to undermine these workers’ legitimate concerns and their right to pursue industrial action. Today they were met by a counter-protest, in yet another attempt to intimidate them. This is a further example of the culture they are challenging.”
Fast forward and the officers represented by Community have now formally served notice of their ballot for industrial action. An update from the National Committee of the Unite Officers Bargaining Unit gave management the opportunity to prevent this by withdrawing recognition of the UOG:
“Unite were advised that in the absence of our management not agreeing to withdraw recognition of the UOG, the ballot for industrial action would now commence.
Community are now preparing the industrial action notice which is being sent out next week.”
Management refused, so notice was served and ballot papers will start to be issued to officers on 12 March.
Reunite is in complete solidarity with the officers represented by Community, just as we fully supported the staff strike. Both disputes reflect the “toxic bullying culture” which is destroying our union from within. It must stop.
This is not the Graham regime’s only misadventure with employee union branches. A cast of senior management figures, including from Sharon Graham’s office, turned up to the LE128 Unite branch of Unite (and other union) staff and attempted to solicit a donation of thousands of pounds for management’s preferred candidates in the Executive Council election. This was not successful.
As Reunite has documented in recent weeks, our staff, our organisers and now our officers experience this “toxic bullying culture” in different ways, but the root problem is the same.
It’s time to end the toxicity and divisions.
It’s time to get our union focused on winning for members.
It’s time to Reunite.
Staff working under Graham’s husband Clarke went on strike over their complaints of bullying and misogyny — at least three and probably four of five female members of staff in Clarke’s ‘BDSU’ unit quit. But the workers accused the union’s management, run by Graham, of abuse, lawfare and union-busting tactics.
The union’s lawyers admitted that Unite had destroyed evidence, gathered by mostly-women workers in an earlier major complaint against Clarke — who was on a final warning from the union before being promoted, outside usual union procedures, to run the newly-created BDSU after Graham took over.
And workers on strike in the second dispute said that staff working for Graham even staged a counter-demo against their picket.
As Skwawkbox wrote at the time:
Graham’s ‘union-busting’ record against Unite staff and the union’s destruction of evidence in complaints against her husband have outraged staff and labour movement activists…
…Graham’s statement about bad employers raises the question whether she intends to call out and suspend herself, given her admitted and alleged record as boss of the Unite union. During her tenure – which goes to a member ballot again next year and for which she already appears to be electioneering – she has been constantly surrounded by allegations of abuse and anti-union behaviour and one explosive admission.
Bargaining and Dispute Support Unit (BDSU) staff have been in dispute with the union and her husband Jack Clarke over alleged bullying and abuse by Clarke and his allies – far from the first such allegations against Clarke – and have 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 centre and the leaders of two unions representing Unite staff and officers.
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 it, 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.
Graham’s rule of Unite has also been marked by a string of other serious allegations, which neither she nor the union has ever denied – of abuse, cover-up and failure to protect women. And in an astonishing admission exclusively obtained and revealed by Skwawkbox, lawyers acting for Graham admitted that evidence, including recordings – gathered by women accusing her husband Jack Clarke of misogyny, bullying and abuse – had been destroyed.
Skwawkbox had earlier revealed that Graham allegedly attempted to have the evidence destroyed in the complaints against her husband, who now runs the BDSU that she created when she became general secretary, office despite a final warning from the union for his behaviour.
Graham has also faced allegations that her chief of staff threatened a (now-retired) senior officer with the loss of a pension bonus if he did not soften his support for Palestinians against Israel’s genocide and that her allies tricked Abellio truck drivers into accepting a deficient pay deal after they originally voted to reject it.
In addition, the union’s strike fund has collapsed by more than 90% under her tenure, she has been exposed behind the union’s decision to ban showings in Unite’s buildings of a film exposing racism, smears, rigging and abuse by the Labour right and has been accused of turning Unite into right-wing Labour leader Keir Starmer’s ‘poodle’ and attacking anti-genocide campaigners, while members’ elected representatives have not been allowed to see the union’s accounts for well over two years.
The Community Union has formally served notice on Unite, on behalf of officers working in there, of an industrial action ballot for a “Dispute relating to trade union recognition and all matters arising out of that dispute”.
Featured image via the Canary