Tribunal fails to protect safety rep

Tribunal fails to protect safety rep

Penny Gower, a safety rep with the Scottish teaching union EIS, has criticised the flimsy protection provided by employment tribunals to those who stand up for safety. The college lecturer believes she was fired because of her activities as a trade union safety rep. 'The ET ruled that I had been unfairly dismissed due to the College summarily sacking me without an appeal, but concluded that they had been right to dismiss me anyway,' said the sacked Carnegie College tutor. The college first disciplined Penny in 2007, after she investigated the risks to a lecturer working alone in a prison. 'By the time I was sacked on 1 May 2009, Carnegie College had blocked nine separate safety inspections over four years,' she said. 'The decisive event was in March 2009, during a period when I could not return to teaching in the prison until jail security training had been completed. I had given written notice and carried out an inspection of the three campuses as the sole EIS safety rep. For having the temerity to exercise a safety rep's legal rights to inspect, I was dismissed.' The tribunal, though, offered no support. 'The judge concluded that for me to be elected as a safety rep was a red rag to a bull. I was not carrying out health and safety activities; I was just being 'bloody minded'. This despite the 26 page health and safety report I completed after the inspection which took two days when I had no classes.' Penny praised her union, EIS, which was 'was 100 per cent supportive throughout.'

Defend health and safety reps' rights blog and Penny Gower's safety rep inspection report [pdf].