This comprehensive account of the Weaver v NATFHE/Bournville College case is now available and, together with the supportive documentation, can be downloaded for free It is an account of the workplace harassment of an Asian woman lecturer.

It deals with the attempts of these union bureaucrats to cover up the harassment and the effect this harassment would have on their image and interests; and it exposes the schemes concocted by the harassers and their collaborators to put pressure on the victim to abandon her complaint. The leadership of the Birmingham Labour Council, with overall responsibility for employee’s conditions in the city’s Colleges of Further Education, also tried to bury the case because of its implications to the city council’s purported anti-racism policy; and the Council employed a number of tactics against the complainant in its attempts to achieve this aim.

The legal case that arose out of the harassment (Weaver v NATFHE) caused a stir among trade unions, members of parliament and anti-racist organisations when NATFHE’s racially discriminatory policy was exposed at Industrial and Employment Appeal Tribunals. The union’s policy was to defend harassers irrespective of the merit of the complaint because the tenure of the harasser was put at risk, and the union saw its principal responsibility to defend the harasser’s tenure. This policy became applicable to all trade unions as a result of the decision at the EAT – a policy extant in 2014. (see Harvey’s Industrial Relations and Employment Law)

The account of this four-year case is preceded by NATFHE’s earlier failings to develop an effective anti-racist commitment, exposed during the Fernandes affair. NATFHE’s later failings in the Shahrokni case is also covered, as is Deman v AUT.

This case exposed the limitations of the anti-racism commitment of NATFHE officers and officials; and describes their actions in the college and in union committees. The main concern of these officers and officials, wrapped up in the robes of self-proclaimed anti-racists, was to protect their political associates and the image of the union – a form of union patriotism overriding their alleged commitment to a racism-free society.

 

Download here: http://www.theplebeian.net/

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