WeeklyWorker

19.07.2000

MSF and Roger Lyons

Transform the unions

The Manufacturing, Science and Finance trade union has reached a substantial out-of-court settlement with a former employee who had claimed that she was unfairly dismissed for 'whistle-blowing' over alleged fraud by two of the union's most senior officials. The payment of £50,000 to Marcia Solomon, who had been a secretary to MSF's head of finance, Nelson Mendes, came the day after the central London industrial tribunal's hearing of Ms Solomon's case had been halted by the chairman to give the parties an opportunity to reach agreement. The union will additionally pay her legal expenses, which are expected to exceed £50,000.

The tribunal had heard that Solomon had first become concerned at "irregularities" in expenses claims submitted by the union's general secretary, Roger Lyons. Lyons, whose salary is £97,000, had made claims amounting to £14,000 in one year. Many of these were unreceipted claims for food and drink on occasions when he had attended meetings. Lyons had also used the union's credit card to purchase personal and household items, including two radios, a video recorder, a leather briefcase and a luggage trolley. Solomon decided to take her concerns to the then assistant general secretary, John Chowcat, after a far more serious matter had come to light. She claims to have seen cheques, worth over £34,000, made out to both Lyons and Mendes from accounts apparently belonging to branches of the union which were defunct.

In common with most other unions, MSF's head office bank accounts, together with those of the overwhelming number of its branches, are with the Unity Trust Bank, which was set up by several unions.

Giving evidence to the tribunal, Laurie Bell, a senior manager of Unity Trust, described how the bank had allowed either Lyons or Mendes to be the single signatory of cheques on 10 of the union's head office accounts. The two also had the power to order money to be taken out of branch accounts and paid into head office. Under cross-examination from Solomon's representative, Bell recalled having been asked to search for the cheques which the former claimed to have seen. He agreed that the bank had failed to do a "comprehensive" search. When shown internal MSF accountancy documents, Bell agreed that there appeared to be another 22 accounts which had not been included in any of the bank's statements supplied to the union.

The halt to the tribunal came, however, immediately after the evidence supplied by Chowcat. He told how he had himself given details to the union's finance committee of serious charges against Lyons and Mendes - involving sums totalling around £130,000 - based upon his investigations of Solomon's concerns, and he had supplied the committee with documentation which it had requested. This had led to his "vilification" and subsequent dismissal for "gross misconduct" by Lyons. However, when he had lodged an appeal, the union had decided to say that he had retired and it paid him £'250,000 compensation as the substance of an agreement, which included a confidentiality clause. Shortly after Chowcat's departure, Solomon was herself dismissed for alleged gross misconduct.

Even after the settlement, a spokesperson for the union continued to insist that Solomon's actions had been malicious. The latter however was disarmingly modest and generous in her statement: "I regret having had to take the MSF to an employment tribunal, as I always considered it to be an excellent organisation, not least in its campaign to provide protection for whistle-blowers."

It is clear from these outrageous dismissals alone that Lyons rules this union like the worse kind of autocrat. Any impugning of his reputation is regarded by him and his supporters as heinous crimes for which the perpetrator must be erased, rather than as serious matters confronting the working class and its hard won organisations, which should merit the most detailed, open and honest investigation. The MSF has spent almost half a million pounds on defending the reputation of an odious monstrosity who lives in the lap of luxury by leaching on the union subscriptions of many thousands of working people.

The London regional committee of MSF, already at war with Lyons over his suspension of six of its officers, who took the Labour Party to court after the disfranchisement of the union in the London mayoral nomination process, has called for Lyons's immediate resignation. This proposed remedy is, however, woefully inadequate.

The truth is that bureaucracy itself breeds corruption, abuse of power and moral degeneration. Workers' organisations are turned into obstacles to the struggle to satisfy members' needs. How true were Lenin's words, in Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, when he foretold the labour bureaucracy becoming like a tumour which gets bigger than the organism it feeds on. Sweeping changes are needed to give all of our trade unions back to their members, before they are destroyed by bureaucrats like Lyons.

The unions must be transformed into powerful combat battalions of our class. That is why communists make the following demands:

Derek Hunter