
Subway workers agree interim deal to avoid risk of strike during Trnsmt
About 100 staff working for Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) were due to walk out this weekend, on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, during the Trnsmt festival at Glasgow Green.
A previous walkout saw the subway forced to close for three days, with fears raised about potential disruption during a busy period in the city.
But staff have accepted an interim offer which was made on Tuesday that will increase pay, allowances, sick pay and overtime rates at a cost of £245,000 to the operator, according to trade union Unite.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham praised staff after the deal was announced.
'Unite's members should be applauded for remaining strong and taking the brave stance of industrial action to get a better deal from SPT,' she said.
'Pay and allowances have all been significantly improved alongside a commitment by SPT to address the future working conditions of Glasgow's subway system.'
The union's industrial officer, Andrew Brown, said: 'Unite has delivered a good win for our SPT members.
'The interim deal addresses a number of the outstanding concerns that we have over working conditions and rates of pay.
'We now have a route to a lasting agreement on the subway system and we are pleased that SPT meaningfully engaged with the union to bring the strike action to an end.'
A spokeswoman for SPT said: 'We are pleased that working together we have found a solution and way forward which is good news for our customers.
'We know how important the subway is to the public transport network in Glasgow and services will now be running over this busy weekend for the city.'
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Times
4 hours ago
- Times
‘I was followed home', says Unite boss as fraud inquiry deepens
The boss of Unite said that she was harassed and 'followed home' for trying to uncover the truth about Unite under the leadership of Len McCluskey. Sharon Graham, who took over in 2021 on a pledge to 'leave no stone unturned to get to the truth', said that she had endured 'horrendous personal attacks' as the process got 'ugly'. On Tuesday, a report about a scandal-hit hotel complex in Birmingham found that the union, which is funded by workers' fees, was overcharged by £30 million. The main contractor, the Flanagan Group, owned by men whom McCluskey called his 'good friends', paid for the former union boss to fly out to watch the Champions League final two years running, including in a private jet, the report found. The report said that the union believes that there is evidence to support criminal investigations into two 'very senior' former Unite officials. The case was passed to the Serious Fraud Office last year but no arrests have been made. Unite said that the 'reports are with the police'. The union's auditors found that there was a 'pervasive fraud environment' at Unite and that 'former members of senior management appear to have been motivated to commit fraud'. Ten suspects have also been identified in a separate investigation by South Wales police into bribery, money laundering and fraud relating to contracts for affiliated services offered by the union. Graham, who has struggled to pull the union from the shadow of its past, said that 'to get here has been an extremely difficult process and quite frankly an ugly one'. 'Those with much to lose, and their supporters inside and outside the union, have done all in their power to attack me,' she said in a foreword to the report. 'I have had to endure horrendous personal attacks over three years, both from vested interests and those with blind loyalty to factions. 'I expected turbulence of course, but even I was shocked at the lengths being gone to: despicable online abuse and being followed home.' She claims that her opponents operated a 'scorched earth strategy that was adopted by some supporters of a faction tied to the past' to 'lie' about Unite. • Unite leader Sharon Graham defends strategy of targeting bosses' families The union ultimately paid £112 million for a hotel and conference complex in Birmingham, £74.5 million more than it was worth. On Tuesday, Unite announced that it had wiped £66 million from its accounts as an 'impairment'. The profit mark-up was double the industry norm and the contracts were signed by McCluskey against the advice of lawyers, the report found. The Flanagan Group, a Liverpool-based construction firm, later arranged football tickets, hospitality and flights, including at least one private jet flight, for McCluskey, the report said. Two of the matches were the 2018 and 2019 Champions League finals in Kyiv and Madrid, the latter of which he travelled to by private jet. The owners of the Flanagan Group 'consistently organised and paid for' his tickets, and there is 'no indication' McCluskey reimbursed them. Lawyers for McCluskey have previously told the BBC that he paid for his own travel in full and did not recall attending all of the domestic matches in the Unite report. • Unite left fearing fraud squad's might A statement issued to The Times this week by Carter-Ruck, McCluskey's lawyers, said: 'Our client is deeply disappointed by the statements and report published today by Unite, which were issued without any prior reference to him, and he is considering his legal rights in this regard. 'As this matter is understood to remain the subject of ongoing police investigation, it would be inappropriate of McCluskey to comment in detail on it at this time. Suffice to say that such allegations as have been published regarding our client are categorically rejected by him as inaccurate, selective and highly misleading.' In interviews with a KC leading Unite's investigation, McCluskey denied that he overruled staff or lawyers over the contract, and instead said that he had delegated many key aspects of the project to Ed Sabisky, Unite's former finance director, who died in 2020. The Times called the Flanagan Group for comment on Tuesday. Their representative declined to answer questions or give an email address.


The Independent
7 hours ago
- The Independent
Is it time the BrewDog beer empire went flat?
When it launched in 2007, craft beer BrewDog was a 'punk' brand. It's a word that featured on many of the cans of its IPA sold at the Fontaines DC show at Finsbury Park earlier this month, and at summer festivals across the land. It's a sign of something young, cool, edgy. What's not so cool is abruptly closing 10 bars, including BrewDog's flagship outlet in Aberdeen, some within a matter of days. 'Morally repugnant,' said the union Unite, which represents some of the workers whose livelihoods have been affected by the closures. True, companies sometimes have to close outlets when they're losing money, especially if the wider group is in the red and really can't afford to be subsidising places that aren't washing their faces financially. That's the harsh reality. But while that sort of decision is always going to hurt the workers on the receiving end, there are ways and means of handling these things. Unite has raised questions about the firm's tactics, telling the BBC that this is: 'Yet another example of a company that doesn't have the slightest regard for basic employment law, let alone the welfare of their workers.' It says it is working with the affected workers to challenge the decision, legally if necessary. BrewDog was an entertaining and innovative start-up that became a big success, planting its flag overseas and tweaking the nose of the establishment along the way. It had an original way of garnering finance by creating 'equity punks' through crowdfunding. These supporters turned up at sometimes raucous AGMs. The group also had a keen eye for PR stunts. Its critics obligingly went into meltdown when the company launched nuclear-strength beers. In recent years, however, the brand has acquired a coat of tarnish. In 2021, former workers wrote an open letter highlighting what they claimed was a "culture of fear" within the business while alleging "toxic attitudes" towards junior employees. The following year, a BBC investigation aired allegations of inappropriate behaviour on the part of co-founder and now-former CEO James Watt. These were denied. But Ofcom rejected a complaint made by Watt and the company against BBC Scotland on the grounds of 'fairness and privacy'. It said: 'Ofcom's decision is that material facts were not presented, disregarded or omitted in a way that was unfair to the complainants, that they had an appropriate and timely opportunity to respond to the allegations made in the programme, and that their response was fairly reflected in the programme.' Then last April, Watt – who publicly opposed Brexit – was pictured at Nigel Farage's 60th birthday party. Now, I want to be clear here: I really couldn't care less who his friends are, or whose parties he chooses to go to. Business leaders need to engage with all sides for the health of their companies. That's lobbying. It's silly to huff and puff when they do that. But partying with a polarising figure that a large chunk of your customer base reviles is different. The optics are not good. It's a poor business decision. And it was only a few weeks after Farage's party that Watt stepped down from the top job at BrewDog, 17 years after he co-founded the Scottish brewer. The company also decided to cease paying the real living wage, based on the cost of living, in favour of the lower rate mandated by the government, citing the need to return to profitability in a tough climate for the hospitality industry. For his own part, Watt has previously decried those who seek a "work-life balance", rather than what he called "work-life integration", suggesting that if you love you work, you don't need to separate it from your personal life. Much of the hospitality sector has been swimming upstream, it is true. 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Is that true of Watt and, by extension, BrewDog, which he is still closely involved with even if he's no longer the CEO? How much are you willing to pay for 'punk' beer that isn't really so punk? A beer that is, in reality, part of the establishment but expects you to pay a premium price that the local Wetherspoon's doesn't demand (far from it). I suspect the answer isn't to BrewDog's taste.


Telegraph
9 hours ago
- Telegraph
Len McCluskey's rank incompetence is finally being exposed
I've a rule of thumb which, over the past decade, has pretty much always proved correct. Find an ally of Jeremy Corbyn – especially one who spent most of the former Labour leader's period in office arguing that the party's anti-Semitism crisis was made up by his opponents – and you'll find that, sooner or later, something else emerges which casts doubt on what we might call their status as an upstanding member of society. Step forward Len McCluskey, former head of Unite. Yesterday an internal union dossier, based on a report by a KC, was revealed to have found that he took flights on private planes and tickets to see his team, Liverpool FC, play in the 2018 and 2019 Champions League finals in Kyiv and Madrid. The flights and tickets were, according to the report, provided by the same company which was building a multi-million pound hotel and conference centre in Birmingham for the union. They were, the report says, 'consistently organised and paid for by' the Flanagan Group, with 'no indication' that McCluskey ever reimbursed the company. McCluskey had called the company's bosses 'good friends'. The project is currently the subject of an investigation by the Serious Fraud Office. According to the dossier, the Flanagan Group overcharged Unite by at least £30 million. The report also alleges that McCluskey 'overruled' staff and the union's lawyers when he signed the contract with the Flanagan Group. Construction lawyer, Martin Bowdery KC was commissioned by McCluskey's successor at Unite, Sharon Graham, to investigate the circumstances around the hotel project. According to the leaked report, he found that there was 'no competitive tendering process', that the Flanagan Group had 'a history of poor performance, delays… and cost overruns on previous contracts' and that Unite spent 'at least' £72 million more than the hotel and conference centre project was worth. The original estimate for the project was £7 million but by its opening in 2021 Flanagan Group had been paid £96 million for its work. The report says that £30 million of that was overcharging and the company submitted bills 'massively over the original estimates'. In a separate finding, a loan of £400,000 from Unite towards the purchase of a £700,000 flat for McCluskey was said not to have been authorised by the executive committee in advance. In response, McCluskey's lawyers said the former union leader was 'deeply disappointed' by report, which the he claims was issued without any prior reference. The flat loan, according to his lawyers, was made as part of Unite's home equity scheme': 'At all relevant times, this scheme was open to all officers of the union, in recognition of the expectation that most, if not all, of Unite's officers would (at that time) work from the union's central offices in London. We are instructed that the scheme did not require prior approval from the Executive Council on a case-by-case basis.' McCluskey's lawyers' statement said he was unaware of concerns by Unite staff or lawyers when the hotel contract was signed, did not recall signing it and was uninvolved in the selection of the Flanagan Group. They added that he paid for his travel to the football matches in full and travelled on a commercial flight for one, and that when he attended with the Flanagans he paid his way – and did not believe he attended all the domestic matches detailed in Unite's report. One thing is clear from McCluskey's time as leader of Unite: he was a malign influence on British politics. At the time of his friend Jeremy Cobyn's Labour leadership, McCluskey said the anti-Semitism crisis in the Labour Party was 'wildly exaggerated' and that the leaders of the Jewish community had shown 'intransigent hostility and an utter refusal to engage in dialogue', asking that they engage in dialogue before the divide between them and the party became entrenched. McCluskey's support for Corbyn – and the funding that came from his union – empowered and prolonged the former leader's time in office, which not only pushed Labour on a path to its worst ever result in 2019, but which led to the Jewish community fearing for its future in the UK. Whatever comes next for Len McCluskey, Britain is better off that he is now a man of no significance or influence whatsoever.