Woodley: Bayliss a Disgrace and Scandalous

Any thoughts that if one of the management of Unite (Bayliss, Cartmail or McCluskey) wins the lucrative General Secretary job then Unite will re-unite, were swiftly dispelled this evening.

Woodley and his silent
side-kick McCluskey

Simpson loosely holding
the reins of Les 'Disgrace' Bayliss

In today's Guardian Bayliss had himself a full page spread, in a carefully crafted (but doomed) attempt to potray himself as an honest moderate. The Guardian 'advert' for Bayliss was entitled "BA and Unite dispute is stuck in 70s like Life on Mars" and compounds Bayliss's stupidest statement yet ("If I am General Secretary of Unite there will NEVER be any strikes called over Christmas.” Or Easter, or school holidays, or Ramadan, or bank holidays, or weekends (you get the drift).

So this evening at the anti cuts rally in London General Secretary Woodley struck back (McCluskey seemingly unable speak for himself) saying Bayliss's comments were  "a disgrace" and "nothing short of scandalous".

New! Jerry Hicks press release: 'pawns in an election chess game'. The one non-management candidate in the election is Jerry Hicks .  Jerry came second in Unite's 2009 election for General Secretary, comfortably beating 2 paid officials and losing only to the incumbent General Secretary. There is no incumbent in this election.

All the other candidates apart from Jerry Hicks are highly paid and expensed Assistant General Secretaries in the union. Les Bayliss is the chosen candidate of Joint General Secretary Derek Simpson.  McCluskey is the chosen candidate of Joint General Secretary Tony Woodley.   Gail Cartmail's role seems to us to be to take Amicus votes off Bayliss to assist McCluskey.