Exclusive: Unite sector committee demands investigation into Graham’s anti-worker tactics

Union’s print and IT members note their horror at management’s actions to undermine striking workers and bringing Unite into disrepute, expresses no confidence

The Unite union’s National Industrial Sector Committee (NISC) for the graphics, print, media and IT industry has written yesterday to the union’s elected executive demanding an emergency executive meeting to arrange a full investigation into the behaviour of the behaviour of Unite’s general secretary Sharon Graham for her ‘union-busting’ activities to undermine members of the union who are in dispute and have taken strike action over alleged bullying and abuse by her husband Jack Clarke and his cronies in the Bargaining and Disputes Support Unit (BDSU) unit he runs.

In a letter sent yesterday to the ‘exec’, seen by Skwawkbox, the NISC expresses:

• its complete loss of confidence in Graham and her decisions
• its extreme concern about her and her team’s attacks on striking Unite staff and the GMB union that represents them at work, including a union-busting, intimidatory counter-demonstration organised against striking BDSU workers
• its conclusion that she has broken Unite’s rulebook and brought the union into disrepute
• its demand for the exec to meet urgently in person before its scheduled March meeting
• its demand for a full investigation by the exec into the actions of Graham and her agents

The BDSU staff who are in dispute with staff working under her husband Jack Clarke have alleged bullying and abuse by Clarke and others – far from the first such allegations against Clarke – that she and her management team are employing intimidation, suspension and anti-union tactics against the staff in the dispute.

So bad has this alleged conduct been that more than 90% of Unite staff working at the union’s Holborn HQ have voted for strike action. Three – some say four – of the five women who worked in Clarke’s department since Graham formed it and put him in charge of it have left it, with union sources saying that they also alleged bullying and abuse. The Unite union staff branch unanimously condemned Unite’s abuse of its staff and the influential Officers National Committee (ONC) has accused Graham of using Murdoch-esque anti-union tactics against workers.

Graham’s tenure at Unite has also been marked by a string of other serious allegations, which neither she nor the union has ever denied – of abuse, cover-up and failure to protect women:

• that she attempted to have evidence destroyed in bullying and misogyny complaints about her husband, whom she now employs in her office despite a final warning from the union for his behaviour – Graham’s lawyers recently confirmed that the evidence, including recordings, had been destroyed
• after her supporters failed in their bid to take control of the Unite executive despite ‘dark money’ spending on advertising, ineligible and racist members being allowed to stand and the alleged use of paid organisers in and following the exec election campaign, her faction has resorted to Starmerite tactics to try to discredit the executive members
• that her chief of staff threatened a (now-retired) senior officer with the loss of a pension bonus if he did not soften his support for Palestinians against Israel’s genocide
• that Abellio truck drivers were tricked into accepting a deficient pay deal after they originally voted to reject it

In addition, the union’s strike fund has collapsed by more than 90% under her tenure, she has been exposed behind the union’s decision to ban showings in Unite’s buildings of a film exposing racism, smears, rigging and abuse by the Labour right and has been accused of turning Unite into right-wing Labour leader Keir Starmer’s ‘poodle’, while members’ elected representatives have not been allowed to see the union’s accounts for two years.

The Unite union has previously denied that it has engaged in union-busting or the victimisation of workers in dispute.

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