Management’s assault on democracy slammed by senior figure – members “should demand to have their union back” after election result hidden and blocked
Steve Coe, a former assistant general secretary of the TSSA rail management union, has again gone on record to slam current general secretary Maryam Eslamdoust and her allies for their war on the union’s democracy – and to state, no holds barred, that her allies were hammered April’s elections for the positions of union president and treasurer and then moved to hide and nullify the result.
In a statement posted yesterday to his Facebook page, Coe wrote (emphases added):
Today – 1 July – is the day the new TSSA President and Treasurer should be starting their 2 year term of office.
It is now clear that Melissa Heywood and Mary Sithole were beaten in the recent election – they were rejected by TSSA members. Hardly surprising after what can only be described as a woeful period in the union’s history.
There has been no significant growth in membership. Huge sums have been spent on new highly paid senior staff to support the vanity project being led by General Secretary Maryam Eslamdoust while the organising staff that support members and reps in the workplaces have seen their numbers fall dramatically, resulting in massively increased workloads and rock bottom morale.
TSSA once had a reputation for being an open and democratic union. Sadly, that reputation has been trashed by Heywood and Eslamdoust.
Both Annual Conferences held since they were elected have been a shambles, with Heywood ruling out of order unprecedented numbers of motions while both have manipulated the business of conference to suit their own petty political agendas.
No wonder that conference this year refused to allow itself to be closed and decided that it should be reconvened to complete its business.
Heywood and Sithole were beaten in a perfectly fair election, members clearly preferring Duncan Bates and Paul Mangan to be their President and Treasurer.
It is no coincidence that on the very day that the ballot closed, Heywood and Sithole along with Eslamdoust immediately set about overturning an election that hadn’t gone their way.
To their shame, a majority of Executive Committee members have supported what amounts to a coup d’etat. What will happen next is as yet unclear.
But any attempt by Heywood and Sithole to continue in the positions of President and Treasurer should be seen (as Helena Kennedy KC put it in her report) as power hoarding, and of course in breach of TSSA Rules and therefore totally illegitimate.
TSSA members should be loudly telling Heywood and Sithole that they will not be recognised by them as being the legitimate TSSA President and Treasurer.
And they should tell the General Secretary and the Executive Committee that they want their votes to count and that democracy must be restored.
They should demand to have their union back.
Coe went exclusively on the record with Skwawkbox last month to accuse Eslamdoust and her hangers-on of “using every trick in the book” to conceal and nullify the election results to protect her factional allies who lost. The union has still not announced the result of the ballots, instead waiting weeks before then announcing that one of the elections will be re-run – the other is expected to suffer the same fate – and to claim that one of the (winning left-wing) candidates was ineligible, having already suspend the other, as soon as the ballot closed, for an unspecified complaint that was not explained even to the victim of the suspension.
Having been brought in – and endorsed to members by the TSSA executive despite having no relevant experience, after threats that they had better select Eslamdoust or they’d have to answer to Andi Fox, a senior TSSA figure and close confidante of previous general secretary Manuel Cortes – Eslamdoust and her team have previously:
- been repeatedly accused by union staff, who have been in dispute with their employer for more than a year, of bullying and using anti-union tactics against them – and of crossing their picket line during strike action
- been accused of paying off disgraced former managers of the union she claimed she was going to sort out after years of sexual harassment and mismanagement under her predecessor Manuel Cortes
- suspended senior union figures not in Eslamdoust’s camp just after they won key elections or awards from the union
- lost a unanimous vote of no confidence among TSSA staff and another unanimous vote by one of TSSA’s biggest member branches
- tried to bypass TSSA staff in their dispute by going straight to the GMB union that represents them at work
- attacked the GMB in the national press – and attacked striking staff in an email to members
- ‘summarily derecognised’ the TSSA’s women’s group, which accused Eslamdoust and her allies of perpetuating the abuse and harassment that characterised the regime of her predecessor Manuel Cortes
- barred delegates and members from last year’s TSSA annual conference and blocked a no-confidence motion brought against her
- attacked delegates at the 2025 conference as ‘parochial’ for wanting to raise these issues
Members and staff say that far from putting right the sexual harassment, bullying, misogyny and abuse under Cortes, which were exposed in a searing report by Baroness Helena Kennedy, Eslamdoust and her allies have continued and even escalated the war on the union’s staff.
Skwawkbox has previously approached the union for comment about these issues and allegations, with no response.
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Even if the membership work-out what’s going on, afaik there’s no way they can remove Maryam Eslamdoust from office. They’re stuck with her until 2028.
Let’s hope the union and membership survive her tricks.
‘Oh Dear.
See how lumpen leaders.
Cling on to useless power.
Time for TSSA members to free themselves.
Goodbye lightweight bourgeois power.’
This represents yet another manifestation of what Norman Finkelstein was talking about in the video I posted the other day.
The point being that what every normal person recognises as law and due process is being systematically and deliberately replaced at every level – from the International to the local levels and everywhere in-between – by an exceptionalism which makes the rules up as it goes along to suit the convenience of a tiny minority of rich parasitic sociopaths intoxicated on power.
This cited example is “The Rules Based International Order” operating at a lower level. Same M.O. Same exceptionalism. Same rules and procedure don’t apply to us attitude and approach.
There is no persuasive reasoning with or rational and sensible sticking with the rules approach to deal with those at any level who operate in this way. The only way to defeat it is for those practicing and defending this to no longer be here.