Council staff sacked over sick e-mails deserve fair hearing

Dec 18 2008

IT is not normal for a union representative to comment on an ongoing disciplinary case, however I wish to correct the wild inaccuracies in the recent letter in the Advertiser, ‘Council right to sack staff over vile e-mails’.

No-one in the council has been found to be trawling the internet for pictures and placing them on images of Gary Glitter.

The anonymous letter-writer, somewhat hysterically, asks readers to imagine a possible scenario in which the staff might have been sending such images “around the world in a vile e-mail.” It is not true. It did not happen.

A certain poor-quality Sunday newspaper reported that 15 social workers had been sacked (not true) for taking pictures of children on the “at risk” register and putting them on the Gary Glitter image (again not true). This is the subject of a formal complaint from my trade union, Unison.

Those individuals who have been dismissed are entitled, under council procedures and the law of the land, to appeal their dismissal and to receive a fair hearing.

This means that the details of why they were sacked should remain out of the public domain until they have had that fair hearing.

I cannot comment, therefore, on the actual facts of the cases but such false stories as these make it more difficult to ensure the fair hearing the individuals are entitled to.

I should hope that the correspondent would recognise that getting dismissed is a traumatic experience for any individual and their family.

It is made much worse when stories are made up and they become the subject of hysterical comment in the press.

Stephen Smellie, Unison South Lanarkshire branch secretary.