Latest from Unite
Sent: Saturday, September 04, 2010 10:07 AM
Subject: BASSA: THE MEDIA AND WILLIE WALSH
Below is a recent letter from Unite's Andrew Murray to British Airways
manager Hazel Hughes who is the person investigating BASSA reps'
grievance into BA handing over to the media (Daily Mail) confidential personal details. As well as highlighting BA's continued use of dirty tricks in
their battle against us, it also shows the level of media connivance that
goes on and perhaps explains why it has been an uphill task to get the
media to cover this dispute with any fairness. BA and Willie Walsh have
very close links with papers such as the Mail and the Telegraph but also
other big organisations such as Sky. For example, we have seen
correspondence that proves Judith Simpson (Head of BA Corporate
Communications) is "very close" to Anji Hunter who is married to Adam
Boulton Political Editor of Sky News. Over the years BA have carefully
cultivated all the national media and with perhaps the exception of the
FT and the Guardian it is extremely hard to get balanced reporting let alone pro union coverage.
Dear Ms Hughes,
Your letter to Pauline Doyle of July 19 has been passed to myself.
Pauline is Unite's Head of Media and Campaigns and reports to me.
I infer from your letter that you are charged with investigating the
passing of confidential information held by British Airways on several of
its employees to the Daily Mail in the course of the current dispute
between your company and its cabin crew represented by this union.
Your letter makes reference to the article about Nigel Stott which
appeared in the Mail on May 17 2010. I would also refer you to the
article which appeared in the same newspaper on December 17 2009
concerning Lizanne Malone. Mr Stott and Ms Malone are both elected
representatives of Unite BA cabin crew.
Daily Mail reporters first approached Mr Stott, Ms Malone and a third BA
employee (and Unite representative), Mr Duncan Holley, in December last
year, at a time when Unite BA cabin crew had voted overwhelmingly to take strike action pursuant to the union's dispute with the company. You will find the reporters' names printed at the head of the articles.
All three colleagues reported - in emails received by Ms Doyle on
December 16 2009, and in subsequent phone calls to her - that the Mail reporters had asked them (or relatives at their homes) to confirm information regarding their sickness absence, annual leave and other personal matters.
The degree of detail already in the possession of the reporters (sick
leave taken, home addresses, absence on leave over a number of years) s
such as it could only have come from either your company or from the
colleagues themselves. It is apparent that Mr Stott, Ms Malone and Mr
Holley would have no interest in supplying the Daily Mail, a newspaper
extremely hostile to trade unions in general and to their part in this
dispute at BA in particular, with material to be used in articles aimed
at undermining the union's position. Moreover, some of the information was connected to personal and family issues which the colleagues named would not have wished placed in the public domain under any circumstances.
As for Ms Doyle, she would not have had access to any of the information
concerned, nor would have had any reason to seek to draw it to the
media's attention if she had. The first she knew of any of the details of
sickness or absence from work was when she was approached by the
journalists concerned, or by the colleagues involved after they had been
contacted themselves by the Mail.
It is of course apparent that only BA itself would have the means, the
motive and the opportunity to place such confidential information,
obtainable from the operational departments managing cabin crew, in the
public press. There are several indications that the company did so. I
have before me an email received in December 2009, before the first Mail
article appeared, in which a former BA employee recounts meeting a BA
board director at a seasonal party. The director confided "that BA had
released 3 names to 'united press?' as the trouble makers and asked the
Sunday papers to do a hatchet job on us. The names were Duncan Holley,
Nigel Stott and Lizanne Malone." Substitute "associated press" for
"united press" and you have an exact prediction of what actually
happened.
Furthermore, several journalists have advised me that the information was
leaked through the agency of British Airways corporate communications
department. No doubt you can direct enquiries to Julia Simpson and Paul
Marston concerning this. A simple check as to which BA employees the
Daily Mail or the reporters involved from company landlines or mobile
phones in the first part of December 2009 would go quite a long way
towards establishing who may have leaked the information
You should also know that Willie Walsh lunched with Paul Dacre, Editor of
the Daily Mail on March 31, some time after the newspaper began running
smear stories against BA employees. It may seem strange that your Chief
Executive should socialise with the editor of a newspaper attacking BA
employees if your company does indeed take such unauthorised disclosure of confidential information as seriously as you assert, but one can only assume that Mr Walsh would have taken the opportunity to ask Mr Dacre where he got his information from, and to desist from printing further such stories. Since Mr Walsh must surely have made such an appeal, given your purported concern at the leaks, it is more than surprising that further articles prying into Mr Stott's circumstances appeared subsequently. No doubt you will be asking Mr Walsh to elucidate on the matter of his lunch with Mr Dacre.
Given that British Airways has sufficient resources to monitor a large
number of websites, to track confidential text messages and Facebook
exchanges and to dispatch investigators to sit outside its own employees
homes in order to gather information on them the better to instigate
disciplinary action, I am sure that, given the will, you will find out
which of your employees has decided to place confidential employee data
in the press, but if I can be of any further assistance in pointing you in
the right direction, please ask.
Of course, Unite reserves the right to pursue those responsible for this
grave breach of BA's duty to its employees by whatever other legal,
industrial or professional means seem appropriate to us.
Yours sincerely
Andrew Murray
Director of Campaigns and Communications