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| Simpson: Wads and Wads of it |
Below is the letter to union bodies telling them how to present this problem:
We can anticipate that this will give rise to disquiet among the membership"
Here is the official union statement
Here are the Union prepared Q&A
It seems that the age old cycle of the new bureaucracy getting revenge on the old is in play. What is becoming evident is how little the lay parts of the union (mostly the small General Secretary supporters clubs) knew. At the Executive debate on this, which lasted about 4 hours, it was decided to investigate the possibility of launching a legal challenge with a view to claiming the money back. Yeah sure, just like last time, when it took an ordinary member to get rid of GS Lyons.
Dearunite.com confidently predict this cycle will be happening again when McCluskey goes. Unless a grass roots candidate wins in which case maybe we'll actually get some funds back and it'll all come to an end.
It seems to me on reading these papers that there remain many unanswered questions:
ReplyDeleteIf the papers are correct, how can it be appropriate that AGS Les Bayliss would exclude, with the exception of the Chair the entire Amicus F&GP from the meeting where the proposal to make the severance payment was proposed and agreed?
Would such a meeting have been quorate?
Did the rest of the Amicus F&GP just accept being excluded from the meeting without even a whimper?
According to the papers, Steve Davidson's affidavit say's that the proposal to make the severance payment came from AGS Bayliss. As Ex Officio, would not his participatory rights be limited as a consequence of his status?
I.E., can he even make such a proposal? I would have thought, regardless of the merits of the proposal, it would have to come for a lay member to have legitimacy. More so, when you consider that at this point Brother Bayliss would have been contemplating his own future severance package had he been elected to the post of GS.
Finally, if the decision to make the payment was made during the merger process, then wouldn't it have fallen under the interim Unite rule book?
If yes, my understanding is that such expenditure would have required the sign off of both JGS's. If Woodley didn't know about it and therefore didn't sign off on it - then we can't be obliged to pay it surely?
We need to know the truth about what happened here? The papers rightly say "We can anticipate that this will give rise to disquiet among the membership". what the members want is transparency - I'd rather have a thorough investigation that exposed any wrong doing than this attempt to bury a bad smell.
It is preposterous to suggest that Woodley and his front man McCluskey didn't know what Simpson's retirement package was. They were more than happy to let him leave and them suggest there was some dishonesty in order to discredit former-Amicus leaders and processes. This is the way the T&G machine works. T&G Mark II rolls on!
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