Rolex-Wearing Union Leader Faces Allegations of Union-Busting

One of the world’s best-paid trade union officials has been challenged over union-busting allegations as his workforce face losing their jobs.

In June, the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) announced a cost-saving restructure which involves getting rid of 25% of its staff, putting around 50 roles at risk of redundancy. Every single rep for the ITF’s Unite branch is at risk. The ITF denies targeting union reps.

The ITF is a federation of hundreds of unions and represents 16.5 million workers around the world. Major British unions such as the RMT, Unite, ASLEF, GMB, PCS and TSSA are affiliated to the ITF. A French trade union has threatened to pull out of the federation if any cases of union busting are proven.

In July, workers from the ITF’s Unite branch lodged a complaint to Stephen Cotton, ITF general secretary. Workers wrote: “A hugely disproportionate impact of the proposed cuts falls on current or former union representatives, so much so as to amount to potential trade union victimisation.

“Our review of management’s proposed changes indicates that 100% of current or former union representatives in scope of the restructure have been placed at risk of redundancy … Ordinary members of the union who have been especially vocal – for example by posing challenging questions to leadership during recent all-staff meetings – have also been put at genuine risk of redundancy.”

Workers voted to strike over the proposed redundancies in July, but postponed the strikes as negotiations started.

Cotton is paid over £300,000 a year, likely making him one of the best-paid union general secretaries in the world. Often seen wearing a Rolex watch, Cotton has washed his hands of the redundancies. These are instead being handled by assistant general secretary Rob Johnston, who was caught up in a ballot-fixing scandal in 2002 when he worked at the Amicus union, which was Labour’s biggest donor at the time.

At the time of the meeting at which the redundancies were announced, Cotton was at the International Labour Conference in Geneva. The ITF shared a post on Facebook saying he “delivered a message on behalf of the world’s transport workers: we deserve dignity, safety and a future where rights are non-negotiable.”

While he was standing up for the dignity of workers, however, he missed the meeting at which his own staff were told of the impending cuts. One ITF worker told Novara Media: “The general secretary didn’t even show up for our all staff announcing the redundancies. Even in a corporate environment you could never imagine that happening with a CEO.”

The union’s bloated and well-remunerated management class have been completely spared from the chop. The rest of the staff, meanwhile, have been subjected to what Unite called a “rushed ‘change process’ [which] has been marked by chaos, uncertainty, contradictory information, omissions, and a lack of clear planning or strategic thinking.”

The ITF has conducted what workers call a “sham” consultation and a topsy-turvy voluntary redundancy process which started only after presenting workers with a new structure in which numerous roles had been scrapped.

“How can it be voluntary if you have a sharp stick pointed at your head saying ‘your job doesn’t exist anymore’?”, said one worker.

Another worker said: “They did four consultations a day for a week and they were visibly exhausted. I don’t know how a consultation can be meaningful when the person who’s supposed to be listening to you has been boxed in a hot room all day and is getting names mixed-up. We didn’t get direct answers and a lot of the information contradicted what we had been told before.”

Workers would like to present an alternative plan to make savings, but calls from Unite for transparency about the ITF’s finances have so far fallen on deaf ears.

Nonetheless, there appear to be areas in which savings could be made. The ITF overspent on professional fees including consultants by £1.3 million last year, as well as overspending on its five-yearly congress by £500,000, Novara Media understands. The union also runs an internship programme, which is used to give the nepo-babies of senior union officials work experience.

One worker said: “The board gave a mandate to find cost savings but I don’t think they envisioned that it would all come out of union staff, that management would be given immunity and all these special privileges would be protected.”

“They’re claiming ‘were just so broke’ – but nothing screams that if you look at the general secretary’s decisions or how the organisation spends money.”

Disquiet about the redundancy process has spread to the ITF’s affiliate unions across the world. The Federation of Metro Workers’ Unions of Santiago expressed its concern about the cuts, while the FGTE CFDT – a French union – has written to Cotton warning: “Should even a single proven case of discrimination or retaliation (particularly in the case of a strike) against a member of the ITF Staff Union based in London or the ITF regional staff come to light in the context of this restructuring, FGTE-CFDT would withdraw from the ITF.”

The FGTE-CFDT letter also said: “We invite management to review other potential sources of savings – including the internal travel policy”, believed to be a reference to the number of business-class flights union officers take.

The Unite branch has also highlighted concerns that the “highly uneven” cuts will fall mostly on women, while the mostly-male management will be spared. Workers are concerned that the union hired Sharon Burrow to conduct an equalities review. Burrow is the former head of the International Trade Union Congress (ITUC), who distinguished herself as one of Qatar’s strongest defenders before the 2022 World Cup, calling claims about the numbers of worker-deaths – which the emirate refused to investigate – a “myth”.

An ITF spokesperson said: “We remain committed to engaging meaningfully and constructively on all issues raised through the agreed and established internal change process, and additionally through ACAS, but refute the claim that union representatives have been targeted.

“At this stage, no final decisions have been made, and the restructuring proposal remains under consultation, open to feedback and constructive engagement. As this is an internal process that is still ongoing, we will not be commenting further.”