Leaked contract shows Unite ‘ghost worker’ was offered £50k a year

The baggage handler withdrew from Unite the Union’s executive council election in 2023 after he was offered the five-day working week union post, on top of his full-time job at Heathrow. The union has said it was “categorically untrue” that the post was a phoney job.

Allies of Sharon Graham, the general secretary, were allegedly concerned that, if he won, he might oust one of her supporters, The Observer reported last weekend.

The certification officer, the official who regulates unions, said last week an inspector had also been appointed on 16 September to look at claims the union has failed to keep proper accounting records. Unite said it concerns a period before Graham became general secretary, but the inspector can refer other matters of concern to the certification officer.

There are calls this weekend for an external independent investigation into the claims over the alleged baggage handler union post. Graham’s officials say she had no role in the job offer but she now faces calls to disclose financial details of what happened

The baggage handler kept his full-time job and the union is being challenged over whether he did any work in his union role. The job offered to the baggage handler in the early summer of 2023 was as an aviation project worker, with a salary of £44,807 a year and a London weighting of £4,728, according to the employment contract seen by The Observer.

The contract stipulates a 34-hour working week in Unite’s office at Heathrow. The role was initially a 12-month fixed-term contract but lasted up to two years, according to internal correspondence. The employee also kept working full-time as a baggage handler.

In a statement to The Observer from the union’s lawyers last weekend, they said officials “believed, and continue to believe” the worker was given a part-time job.

Unite’s lawyers said on Friday that union officials might have been “mistaken in their belief” that the role was part-time and evidence of the contract offered to the baggage handler “warrants further investigation” as part of the continuing inquiry. The union’s investigation has already concluded there was no phoney job or any evidence of election rigging.

A complaint filed by a whistleblower in August said: “Several colleagues have approached me independently to make me aware that [this person] is on Unite’s payroll. They have also told me that [this person] doesn’t actually do any work for Unite.”

Union sources say the worker was unknown to his supposed Unite colleagues, did not appear on holiday rotas and had not stepped foot in the union’s central London head office.

The union’s executive council is to meet this week and Graham is likely to face pressure to disclose the circumstances around the election candidate’s job. Unite has criticised the whistleblower, claiming he is subject to investigation and has “an axe to grind”.

The Labour peer Tom Watson, a former deputy leader of the party, said: “I am very concerned this is another outrageous use of members’ money, particularly because Sharon Graham said she was going to clear up these Spanish practices.”

Lord Watson added: “Given Sharon Graham has guaranteed independent inquiries where there have been allegations of financial wrongdoing, they should bring in a King’s Counsel lawyer as they have done in other cases to investigate.”

Unite said it would be inappropriate to comment substantially on a continuing whistleblowing inquiry and that some of the information referred to by The Observer was “plainly confidential”.

It said it was unclear why the whistleblower had waited for two years before raising concerns and it considered his complaint was “couched in tentative and speculative terms”.

Photograph by Stefan Rousseau/PA