A three-month strike has been called off at Sefton council, it emerged today, after employers reached a deal with union officials over the treatment of activists in a campaign over housing policy.
The council has been hit by selective strike action over the past three months, after Nigel Flanagan, Paul Summers and four other union activists were suspended for alleged intimidation during a protest in May against the transfer of housing stock.
The council had claimed Mr Flanagan and Mr Summers, both full-time Unison officials, threatened and intimidated other staff at the council. Six months after being suspended, both were sacked on November 4.
Three other staff, Ellen Croft, Debbie Dickinson and Vinny McIntyre, had also been given a formal warning, to lie on file for 12 months, after being accused of intimidating behaviour; while another worker was told she had no case to answer.
Following negotiations at Acas, the council agreed last Friday to reinstate Mr Summers - but refused to reinstate Mr Flanagan, who now expects to receive severance pay.
The three others had their 12-month warnings reduced to six months, as the council acknowledged that their conduct failed to constitute bullying or harassment of tenants.
Unison regional secretary Frank Hont said today: "The trade union acted together at branch, regional and national level. We felt there was an injustice and we felt determined to right that wrong.
"All things being equal, we have achieved a result. We are not gloating about it; we really want to move forward to build a better relationship with the council."
The council has meanwhile decided to rerun the ballot, which saw 55% of tenants vote against the transfer of council housing stock over the summer.
Despite a costly council campaign, Liberal Democrat council leader Tony Robertson claimed that the ballot had been lost because of "misinformation" by the Defend Council Housing campaign, which he said "frightened tenants to death".
Mr Robertson, himself a trade union official for the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), said he had received more than 90 complaints from tenants about intimidation, though he admitted that these were not necessarily from those who had allegedly felt intimidated into voting against the scheme.
"I do not know how the individuals who protested about the conduct of the ballot voted," he said.
Mr Robertson said an independent poll taken before the first ballot had indicated overwhelming support for the stock transfer.
This, however, was before Defend Council Housing had begun their own campaign.
Mr Robertson nevertheless denied that tenants supportive of the stock transfer and unhappy with the democratic ballot result had pressurised the council to run the ballot again.
"We just felt there had not been a free and fair ballot - there should have been," Mr Robertson told SocietyGuardian.co.uk.
Tenants have now formed their own lobby group to try and swing the results to give the stock transfer the go-ahead, he said. The ballot will run over the next three weeks.
Alan Walters, a spokesman for Defend Council Housing, said the council had failed to give one example of the intimidation of council tenants in the runup to the last ballot. "It is outrageous that the council is setting aside the democratic decision of tenants," he said.
