Many unions are not what they seem. You immediately think of the T and G and their lack of support for the dockers. Could you trust a knighted union boss? A combination of spys and a laddish 'old boys network' closed shop mentality ( very difficult to get work in some well paid public sectors - LOADS of nepotism and well paid jobs doing jack shit ). It is a shame the IWW never really took off in this country. Anyway fuck the old untrustworthy unions ( and their strange support for the neo Labour Party ) and form your IWWW.

I am glad some names on the original website have now been changed to X, Y and Z, and that these colleagues, two of whom are also UNISON members, are now protected from further attacks. In any situation there are as many perspectives as there are participants. I am content to be judged by the majority of my colleagues and by others who know me personally and know my record.

You have my sympathy. Sounds like constructive dismissal. Good luck, N.

Sushila, you have obviously been through a traumatising experience, and I wish you every success in your tribunal. I'm concerned, however, that you make some very serious allegations in your posting - namely, complicity between union and management, which I can't see as proven in your posting or in the correspondence on your website. I'm fully aware that globally such complicity does happen, but I do feel that each specific case we allege should be backed up by proof. Unison Brookes' argument in the correspondence is that it is hard to fight a case where you have resigned, and it is clear from the correspondence that they advised against your resignation. You may feel they have not been sufficiently attentive to your case (I have to say that I cannot see that from the correspondence published on your website - perhaps there is more in the background to this story?), but that is not the same as the union "getting the management's solicitor to write" to you. In your posting you quote a letter from UNISON official Ann Black, that she seemed to threaten a collective response from herself together with members of management, but that letter is not printed on the website for us to check. Forgive me if I've got this wrong, but I can't yet see the evidence that would support your allegation of union complicity with management. Please let me know if I have missed something important which would support the allegation.
I'd like to repeat that I wish you every success in your appeal for your job.

hi Richard (author of the previous comment),

You say I've made serious allegations which I haven't proven. I have lots of other emails which I could publish and probably will soon, once I have finished my immediate task of preparing my case for the Employment Tribunal. I haven't released all my evidence yet, precisely because it is going to a tribunal, and there seems to be a general consensus that it is bad practice to discuss a tribunal case in public before the hearing.

However, there seem to be two points which you are raising.

1.) The question of how Brookes management knew about my plans for a website, and therefore were able to send out a letter trying to warn me off BEFORE I had told them about my plans. I wrote to selected Unison members from Oxford Brookes at 11:44 on 15th April, saying I wanted an apology for the way they had treated me, otherwise I would publish my correspondence with them on the Internet. At 13:02 on 15th April, Ann Black, a UNISON official, sent me the following message:
------
Sue

I assume that you have already copied this to Roxanne Teale, Stuart
Brown, Helen Workman, Isobel Ellison, Phil Stuhldreer and Ann
Crosthwaite, all of whom figure by name, as I and others may wish to
make a collective response. No doubt they will contact you directly
if they wish to comment.

Ann
------
Please note that Phil Stuhldreer, named above in Ann Black's email, is the Deputy Director of Human Resources at Oxford Brookes, and is the Brookes contact for this Employment Tribunal case. I can send you a photocopy of an official form if you want further confirmation of this. I admit this is only circumstantial evidence that management may have heard about my plans via Ann Black, but no reasonable person would totally dismisss the possibility that that's how they got hold of the information - and do you have any other ideas about how the news got out?

2.) You seem to think Unison were fairly sympathetic to me. I think you must be a few sandwiches short of a picnic if that is your sincere opinion. Try looking again at this web page:  http://www.sushilaburgess.co.uk/unison201004.htm

Next look at  http://www.sushilaburgess.co.uk/#AnnBlack and read on down the rest of the website.

All I am saying is that I spent about £15 per month on Unison fees for the 19 months that I worked at Brookes. That comes to about £285. I don't think that was money well spent, and that is the point I am trying to make to people who might be enticed by the slogan "Unison, your friend at work". With friends like those, who needs enemies?

In an earlier comment, Richard says that Unison couldn’t really be expected to help me very effectively after I had resigned. OK, but what about BEFORE I had resigned? On 21st September 2004 I contacted Unison asking them to help me lodge an appeal against what I personally considered to be a deeply unfair reprimand by management. I had heard nothing back by 30th September, when I told Unison I had had a miscarriage and was too upset to talk on the phone about an appeal, but asked them to email information about the appeals procedure to me. On 4th October at 17:13, on the tenth working day after the reprimand, I finally received an email from Unison saying any appeal had to be lodged within ten days of written confirmation of the reprimand. Since I was handed the written confirmation at the time of the reprimand, I had missed the deadline. I might have hoped that Unison could have asked for an extension on my behalf, since I was off work sick, having had a miscarriage, but this was not suggested by them, and I was too upset to suggest it myself. On 7th October I resigned. Does this help you to understand why I feel that Unison did not help me wholeheartedly?