TUs and reps.
Safety Concerns,
Clearly neither Papillon nor Juan are convinced by your case. I'm not convinced. We have acknowledged your point of view, but just do not agree.
In what has been a great discussion over the last few days, should we not just agree to disagree on the point about "innocence" and "lack of due process" ?
On the dismissal of "reps", FTOs have frequently advised managers how and when to dismiss them. For instance, one rep (a senior shop steward) I dealt with in a factory of 2500 people honestly believed that closing the factory and losing all those jobs, (and the company's investment) was a better thing to do than to allow further investment in the factory.......!!!! (Yup, it was that daft - even I could not get my Milliband/Dahrendorf on Marx mind around his logic, but it was all to do, of course, with the inevitable end of capitalism.............)
The T & G National Official was, as you might understand, very helpful. The rep was fired for a different reason at a slightly different time. Of course, he was fully, 100% represented by the Union as his appeals and Tribunals all failed. The Company would have been content to pay the cost of losing a Tribunal.