Bar staff sacked after strike win compensation
‘A warning to unscrupulous employers’
WORKERS at a bar who were sacked after going on strike have won compensation from their employer after a court battle. Judge Whitcombe has ordered the owners of The 13th Note in Glasgow, which is in liquidation, to pay staff compensation after they were sacked unlawfully. He said Jacqueline Fennessy, who owned the former bar and venue, had failed to properly consult on sacking more than 20 workers.
Workers took the unusual step of unionising, which led to what representatives described as Scotland’s first bartender strike in 20 years.
Bryan Simpson, Unite’s lead organiser for the hospitality sector, hailed the ruling as “a complete vindication for the workers who unionised in the face of shocking conditions which saw the venue closed down by environmental health”. Glasgow City Council ordered the closure of the venue in June last year after it failed an environmental health inspection.
Simpson added: “The mass redundancy came three days after workers took historic strike action in one of the most blatant examples of trade union victimisation I’ve ever seen.
“Let this be a warning to unscrupulous hospitality employers everywhere: your workers will win justice and Unite will have their back.”
Nick Troy, the lead Unite representative at the venue, said workers were looking at how they could take over The 13th Note. He said: “We unionised to win a fairer and safer workplace at 13th Note but Jacqueline Fennessy did everything she could to stop us, including closing our workplace.
“She issued a press release to the media before telling her own workers they had lost their jobs. With legal justice, we can now turn our focus onto taking the venue back into workers’ hands so that Glasgow has a unionised bar and music venue that pays and treats its workers with respect.”
In his judgment, Whitcombe said the owners failed to respond to the claims put forward at the tribunal.
Fennessy was required under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act to oversee the election of an employee representative and to consult with that person on the proposed redundancies.
It is not yet known exactly how much workers are owed.