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Union Refuse to Re-instate Illegally Sacked Employee
At Amicus' National Executive meeting last week General Secretary Simpson launched a 50 minute tirade against Des Heemskerk, the sacked union employee who has just won a unanimous Employment Tribunal judgement against the union. He also attacked Jimmy Warne, ex-Chair of the Gazette broad left organisation, and Cathie Willis, ex-Head of Purchasing in Amicus. Simpson prefaced his remarks with 'I believe' explicitly to avoid defamation proceedings, there was only one point where he forgot - resulting ironically in Simpson slandering his own lawyers. In fact his barrister was good (and so he should be at about £4,000 a day, plus VAT), it was his case and his Legal Director that were crap (in our belief).

Simpson also attacked www.amicus.cc but that is not unusual for an Executive meeting. All in all he outdid his infamous 'amicus farm' rant which preceded the sacking of the three staff, when he referred to 'former friends out to get me'.

All this hot air drew attention away from the shame and the fact that Amicus is the only trade union to refuse to re-instate its own employee after an Employment Tribunal has judged them illegally dismissed. Certainly union employees have won against unions before, but either settled or never wanted re-instatement. The Executive's refusal is a blatant breech of the TUC guidelines which Amicus claims to support. Most of all it will seriously damage Amicus's representation of ordinary members wanting re-instatement, their employers will simply cite this case.

Members of the executive were given copies of the full Employment Tribunal judgement - undoubtedly individually doctored for tracking purposes - Simpson admitted at the meeting that "from time to time we put a comma in a place to try and find out who’s leaking". Georgina Hirsch, Amicus' Legal Director, had already confirmed at the Employment Tribunal that they put "deep electronic tags" on documents . Despite the damning criticism of Hirsch by the tribunal, none of Simpon's rant was directed against her, on the contrary he pronounced her as "incapable of lying" and declared he had given her the afternoon off because she was "devastated" by the ruling. He did say though that "her reputation has been damaged in the legal profession". Judge for yourself, the unanimous written judgement contained some extraordinary language about the union's Legal Director (who also ran the investigation), starting off with

"The Tribunal had reservations regarding the evidence given by Ms Hirsch...During the course of the hearing Ms Hirsch changed her stance in regard to many matters of substance"

"There was one further matter which gave concern regarding Ms Hirsch's evidence namely that she submitted her statement of evidence only after she had received the statements of evidence of the Claimant rather than producing it prior to exchange and thus in ignorance of what the other witnesses had written." Incidentally Simpson said this was simply because the barrister submitted it late - this would not explain how in Georgina's late statement she made reference to comments in Heemskerk's witness statements which she was not meant to have read.

"5.19 The Tribunal was concerned to observe the attitude of Ms Hirsch in giving evidence. Although she in her statement denied an assertion by one of the trade union officials that she had, and had adopted during the investigation a bullying nature/ manner, the Tribunal was not surprised given her demeanour even when giving evidence that she could be so conceived, particularly when she was doing the investigation, on home ground. The Tribunal was also unimpressed that she felt it necessary to repeatedly protest how important telling the truth was to her because she was a qualified lawyer. She went so far as to say she thought that meant that her word was obviously more reliable than the word of others." "Ms Hirsch was not the ideal person to put in charge of the investigation. But it was not impossible for her to have carried out a fair investigation provided she suppressed her resentment of and antipathy towards the Claimant. Sadly she was unable to do so. Bias against Mr Heemskerk was evident throughout her dealings with the matter."

"The appeal proceeded on the basis that Ms Hirsch's investigation was adequate when a properly critical review would have demonstrated it to be anything but."

"The focus on soft copies led Ms Hirsch to fail to carry out a proper investigation. Not only did Miss Hirsch ignore the fact that two of the questioned source documents were "hard" ie. not produced by electronic means - she failed to even to look at the documents or take advantage of the opportunity offered by Mr Beaumont to see the documents which had been sent anonymously to him and which he had reproduced on the website. This was despite his offer to make them available in suitable conditions and his view that they were clearly of great importance to such an investigation."

All this is surely evidence that the Amicus General Secretary is bonkers (in our belief). Judge for yourself from his own statements last week:

"I taped the meeting with Jimmy Warne" This was when Jimmy was Chair of the 'Gazette' and long before sacking him. Simpson thereby stakes the claim to be the first person to tape record Gazette meetings, something the Gazette has only recently become fussy about.

"They’re linking with likeminded people in the T&G and working with them. They want Woodley as General Secretary."

"There was a nest of phone calls between Des, Jimmy and Cathy. Their jobs had nothing in common, they had no reason to talk to one another". (Des, Cathie and Jimmy have been close friends for years and openly so)

"They were going to challenge me in February but they decided not to."

"His lawyers were good. Ours were xxxx I wanted to stand up and do it myself."

"And right at the heart of the cesspool, Des Heemskerk and Jimmy Warne".

The union's case in a nutshell was that Heemskerk had downloaded the 'Baylissgate' documents from Hirsch's computer network drive and leaked them to amicus.cc. This line was held at the investigation, the disciplinary and the appeal but was totally discredited at the Tribunal. Apart from blaming his own lawyers, the gist of Simpson's rant last week was that the union, right up to the time of the Tribunal itself, had been mislead into thinking the leaked documents they accused Heemskerk of stealing were electronic, when in fact they were paper copies. But in reality the documents posted on www.amicus.cc were clearly not all electronic. The tribunal itself spotted that one and said Hirsch must have known from the beginning:

"It was clear on the face of the documents submitted to the disciplinary hearing that prior to the commencement of the [union's disciplinary] hearing she was aware that one of the disclosed documents had not and could not have been sourced electronically. Thus a major plank of the Respondent's case against Mr Heemskerk was a seriously undermined at the outset."

A remedies hearing is scheduled for later this month and, although extremely rare, it is possible the Tribunal may order re-instatement for Heemskerk. Simpson is throwing yet more members money at lawyers to prevent this happening and has made it obvious that he would not abide by such a ruling.

Incidentally last weeks Executive meeting also refused to consider supporting John McDonnell for leader of the Labour party or donating any funds to his campaign.
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Posted by www.rogerlyons.com on 2nd April 2007