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ALT Environment Secretary took £1,786 football tickets from bosses linked to polluting water company. Steve Reed criticised for being ʻwined and dined' by industry he 'must now take to task'
ALT Labour used water industry analysis to argue against nationalisation. "Economically illiterate' Defra letter sent to anti- sewage groups cites 2018 report commissioned by water companies
ALT ASOS deductions at employment tribunal The East London Employment Tribunal will be hearing two claims against deductions made at QMUL during the Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB) that was part of Action Short of a Strike (ASOS) in 2023.
ALT timeline The justice system imposes short turnovers on workers, else claims are dismissed. All the while, managers stretch out punishment, and the courts delay and remain obscure until the last minute. summer 2024: action short of strike; claimants withdraw a few hours of work July-November 2023: QMUL stretches deductions for five months January 2024: Claimants submit application within three months of the 'incident' Summer 2024: courts remain vague whether a scheduled hearing is preliminary or substantive, public or private September 2024: hearing in employment tribunal future? full hearing?
ALT Legal arguments: Trade Union Duty: the deductions amounted to a failure to give trade union officials paid time off for carrying out trade union duties Black Listing: making ASOS deductions involved the compilation of a ‘blacklist’. QMUL went further than necessary in gathering info, including apparently selecting some boycotters over others in an arbitrary & discriminatory manner. Continuous & Cumulative Harm: QMUL chose to inflict deductions over 5 months with each cut exacerbating the previous one and constituting the whole ‘incident of harm’ from which the three month time limit runs. Human Rights? Will the tribunals, post the Mercer case, take into account the rights-violating absence of a remedy for detriment during industrial action?
ALT Continued work We will not allow employers to use the language of inclusivity to mask the everyday violence of disproportionate pay deductions and other attacks on workers. Organisation: We continue to organise and change the legal landscape for labour, including by going to tribunals and courts. Our efforts and those of supporters are key in holding employers’ economic and emotional violence to account. Communication: Everyone can play their role by spreading the word and doing what you can to support case work and campaigning in your union. politics: We hope the Labour Government addresses the gap in legal protection for workers when they reform the Tories’ anti-strike legislation.
ALT Even after the University and College Union (UCU) called off the boycott in September and the academics scrambled to give students their marks, their pay kept on getting docked for days they had boycotted. For some, December is their first month on full pay since the start of summer. What’s it like to open your payslip and find two-thirds of it has disappeared? Even as staff told me, many worried about reprisals from managers. So here is an anonymised sample of their stories: A woman whose manager knew she was three months pregnant was told at the end of June that her very next paycheck would be docked. The pregnancy was already judged high risk, and she had to support her 4-year-old child and husband. In July, she duly lost £2,147. A man had to take a second job to ensure he could pay his mortgage and his child’s nursery at Queen Mary. He paid his own employer nursery fees, despite it withholding pay for him. To look after his sick mum and elderly dad, another man worked a seco
ALT ASOS Deductions are going to the Employment Tribunal The East London Employment Tribunal will be hearing two claims against deductions made at QMUL during the Marking and Assessment Boycott (MAB) that was part of Action Short of a Strike (ASOS) in 2023. The claims both involve deductions of 50 days of wages, over £10,000 pounds, from UCU members who withdrew a few hours of work during a lawful national dispute over pay, inequality and working conditions in universities.
ALT Graphic showing the London Economics & Universities UK economic impact data.
