Unite urges Hampshire police to investigate ‘bandwagon' leaflets
attacking council workers
8 June 2011
The country's biggest union, Unite, has written to the chief
constable of Hampshire police force requesting that it conducts an
immediate investigation into the origins of leaflets distributed
throughout the Southampton area attacking council workers.
Workers, including refuse workers, have been taking lawful
industrial action since late May in protest at their employer's
insistence that 4,300 council employees sign new, inferior
contracts by July 11th - or lose their jobs.
Unite says that during the first week of strike action leaflets
were stuck on residents' bins with the deliberate intention of
smearing the workers.
The leaflets carry the Conservative party logo but make no
mention of who had written or produced the leaflets. Failure to
clearly establish both authorship and production credentials are
infringements of election law, as set out in the Representation of
the People Act 1983.
Unite regional secretary John Rowse commented: "Our concern is
that this leaflet is deliberately designed to cause division
between the service users of the city and the workforce. Its
purpose is not to inform the people of Southampton but to poison
them against a solution being negotiated between the workers and
their employers, Southampton city council.
"This dispute will only be resolved by negotiation between these
two groups. Interventions from third parties, made for some other
gain, only damage prospects of a peaceful resolution.
"Moreover, in their haste to attack Unite's members, the authors
failed to make it clear who produced or distributed these materials
and could well have breached electoral law.
"We hope that Hampshire police force will take a dim view of
this sort of bandwagon behaviour and caution those who did produce
these leaflets to follow the law rather than stirring up antagonism
against Southampton's workers."
In the letter to the Hampshire chief constable, Unite suggests
that the leaflet violates Section
110 of the Representation of the People Act 1983 and
Section
143 of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act
2000 as amended by the Electoral Administration Act 2007.
The union says the leaflet fails to meet a basic requirement of
election law that all printed materials, including websites and
emails, used during the campaign bear an imprint of the
organisation producing the material.
ENDS
For further information, please contact the Unite press office
on 020 3371 2065.
Donate to the
Unite strike fund for Southampton city council
workers.
Download a copy of the letter to the chief constable of Hampshire
police force.
