DEMAND THAT THE EMPLOYMENT APPEAL TRIBUNAL DELIVERS JUSTICE FOR DENNIS CARABOTT AND ALL WORKERS
We need as many people as possible to attend Dennis Employment Appeal Tribunal hearing Wednesday 18th December 2-3pm.
To reserve a place, please send your full name, phone & email address by 12noon on Tuesday 17th December to:
movement4justice.bamn@gmail.com
Dennis Carabott is a refuse worker and a highly regarded champion of workers’ rights, as a trade union activist and strike leader. On 18thDecember he will start his Employment Appeal Tribunal hearing as part of our fight for his reinstatement in the Newham Council workforce.
Last year Dennis’s case was unlawfully shut down by Judge Massarella, at the East London Employment Tribunal. Dennis did not have an opportunity to present one speck of factual evidence from the overwhelmingly strong case against his illegal sacking by Newham Council. Judge Massarella sprang into action when – before any evidence was heard – the Council’s barrister made a reference to Dennis’s leadership in Newham & Tower Hamlets refuse strikes.
At the last minute, Newham management came up with an unverified email message, supposedly from the manager to Dennis, in order to argue that the appeal was out-of-time. Dennis had never received this email; it was nowhere in any of the Council’s bundle of documents; and, unlike any of management’s actual emails to Dennis, it was not copied to his union support worker. That was standard practice because management knew Dennis is dyslexic.
Judge Massarella knew that too, and he knows that Dyslexia is a protected disability, but instead of observing the recommended procedures he forced Dennis into a humiliating procedure of searching his phone for a message that was not there, and then he drew Dennis’s wife and daughter into the same ridiculous pantomime.
Massarella did nothing to demand that Newham management provide material evidence of the origins of this email. He decided, without a shred of evidence, that Dennis had received and read the supposed email and so the appeal was out of time. He broke every procedural rule in the book and refused to hear the real substance of the case. His behaviour and decision are not an isolated scandal, however. They make it clear why 90% of Employment Tribunal claims fail.
Rather than make any pretence of offering justice to workers, the Tribunals are helping employers, the government, and local councils – to shut down effective representation by union reps and strangle the public workers’ strike movement. That is why it has taken Dennis Carabott and his lawyers more than a year to overcome the resistance of the tribunal system and secure an Appeal hearing.
We must make Dennis’s hearing on 18thDecember a ‘Test Case.’ That requires more than the action of a higher-level tribunal. He needs the support of Newham refuse workers, Tower Hamlets workers, all workers and the entire community of Newham, Tower Hamlets & across London to come forward. The Tribunal must know that IT is on trial– and when we win can then make it a ‘famous victory’ that will inspire the masses of public sector workers to fight new austerity policies we face under the Labour government.
Background:
Dennis message video to Newham Workers to vote yes in their strike ballot just a few weeks before his ET hearing 6 Aug 2023
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Rg0lBqK5gTiOG1LEEj6ni8k7uIMfdkJK/view?usp=sharing
Alex Owolade Declaration statement Dennis Newham EAT:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1psf9QdbteAIOZphThNkgz8yF98RWK4NY/view?usp=sharing
Dennis witness statement for his Employment Tribunal hearing in Sept 2023 which the Judge shut down:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11RvbztAX0M7c3mrLiufV6qM7_TtHyAKd/view?usp=sharing
Alex Owolade
Movement For Justice – Strike To Win Committee
16/12/2024