reprinted from

North West Cowboy No. 1
North West Building site Bulletin for Rank & File trade unionists

Last July, a handful of Manchester electricians bashed the black-list in the Manchester building trade and scored another blow against sweetheart deals on local sites.

This is our interpretation of the decision of the Manchester Employment Tribunal in the case of the Locked-out Manchester electricians: Mr. S. Acheson & others vault DAF Electrical Contractors Ltd.

The outcome of the 12 month bitter dispute was that the Industrial Tribunal found that four of the electricians had been falsely made redundant and that Steve Acheson, Tony Jones, Sean Keaveney and Graham Bowker, had been ‘unfairly dismissed’ by DAF ‘on grounds related to their union membership’.

The finger of justice now points not only at the guilty subcontractor DAF in the Dock; but also at the main company Carillion – which took on the original contract from Manchester City Council before subcontracting it to DAF; and at Richard Leese, Labour leader of Manchester City Council, who throughout the dispute refused to intervene. Yet above all the trade union Amicus turned out to be a shabby little shocker, when one of its officers tried to enforce the blacklisting of T&G shop steward Steve Acheson.

Bosses ‘concocted their evidence’

This was a case where the Tribunal banged the bosses’ heads. The Tribunal considered that the employer’s evidence was unreliable in respect of each of their claims:

“that their was a redundancy situation in early May (2003)”; that they “did not know that the four (to be made redundant) were Transport & General Workers Union members and (that their) work was unsatisfactory”.

The Tribunal “decided that the (company) witnesses had attempted to conceal their knowledge of (their workers’) Transport & General Workers Union membership.” The Tribunal found “that attempt was wholly unconvincing and frankly incredible”. It led the Tribunal “to conclude that it was designed to disguise the true picture.”

Of Mr. David Fahey, the boss of DAF Electrical Ltd., the Tribunal said: His “evidence was unreliable because he sought to postdate the time he became aware of the (men’s) Transport & General Workers’ Union membership.”

Legal Darts Champ

Seldom have I seen such a sexy cross-examination of witnesses as that of Ms Sue Machin for the locked-out Manchester electricians. She was like Charles Dickens’ Madame Defarge knitting while the guillotine fell on the Fahey clan of sub-contracting bosses.

The Fahey family from Cheltenham, which runs DAF Electrical Contractors, were left gasping in the witness box. Ms Machin’s plummy voice was a joy on a June afternoon in the hot Tribunal room, full of local electricians, as she sprung trap after trap for each of the Fahey brothers, charming us all with her silver tongue.

She threw questions with the deadly accuracy of a dart thrower in a Tap-Room. The Fahey brothers leapt around like a crowd of Hibernian Calibans as if tickled ‘with a raven’s feather from an unwholesome fen’ until they were all tied up in knots and fit for nowt.

’AMICUS is our Union!’ cried Michael Fahey from the witness box. This had Ms Machin on her feet: ‘Your Union? ‘ - the employer’s Union?

’Yes, we pay the union dues for the men, ‘ replied Fahey. But this, it seems, is not a straight forward check-off payment of union dues; it’s more like a backhander paid by the bosses to the union, whether the men agree to it or not!

In part AMICUS is looking increasingly like a union that has been bought and sold by the bosses in the building trade. Sweetheart deals and a payoff by the bosses to the AMICUS union is creating an unsavoury situation on the building sites. In the case of the locked-out Manchester electricians it seems Roger Furnage, a now pensioned-off AMICUS official, tried to enforce the black-list against Steve Acheson on the One Manchester Piccadilly site.

As Ms Machin submitted for the electricians: “It was more likely than not that Mr. Furnage (AMICUS official) told (Dave Fahey, DAF) that Mr. Acheson, a well known ‘troublemaker’ and TGWU member, was on site. On 9 May 2003 David Fahey had decided that it was an appropriate time to dismiss some TGWU members.”

How can justice be done when the union and the boss are up each other’s backside? How can justice be done when a City Council, which dishes out the contracts to companies like Carillion/DAF, says one thing and does another? Richard Leese, Manchester City Council Labour Leader, says he is keen on safety at work and wants to protect local labour, but then gives the bosses a free hand to build his ‘World Class City’.

DAF: A company led by Calibans

In the witness box Dave Fahey said he had told Carillion, that in future his firm was going to monitor who it employed more carefully. Blessed by the Blacklist! He said he had only found out late in the day when the Agencies had told him “that Steve Acheson specialised in taking employers to the Industrial Tribunal.”

The truth is the Caliban bosses of DAF were incompetent. The Tribunal was “surprised by the lack of any documentary evidence to support the (bosses) contention that there was any problem with their (workers’) work output.” The Tribunal accepted that the steward – Mr. Acheson’s – “evidence... was more credible than that of the (employers’) witnesses.” But Carillion was angry at the bad publicity from the Manchester dispute at One Piccadilly Gardens and so, the Tribunal found: DAF “had come under pressure from the main contractor (Crown House / Carillion).” The Tribunal found: “They were seeking assurance that the embarrassing episode would end quickly and there would be no reoccurrence.”

Or as Caliban says:

“How does thy honour?
Let me lick thy shoe.. and I thy Caliban,
For I thy foot-licker.”

And so, Dave Fahey’s Caliban licks Carillion’s boot before him; and behind Carillion, awaiting his turn, stands Richard Leese and Manchester City council; and behind the City Council stands the union AMICUS.

So it was on May 21st, 2003, Dave Fahey wrote to “Crown House (Electrical) and Carillion... (that) as a consequence of the action on site we are looking at ways of tightening our selection procedure and can confirm that, with immediate effect, any potential employee will be thoroughly screened before any offer of employment is made.”

The case of Mr. S. Acheson & others v DAF Electrical Contractors Ltd. is embarrassing for the local building site bosses, the City Council and AMICUS, bringing to light unsavoury aspects of the way they operate.