Ex-staff of famed Glasgow music venue The 13th Note have won an industrial tribunal taken against their former employer, who has been ordered to pay them three months’ wages.
The tribunal involved 11 staff, all members of the Unite union, and operator Javacrest Limited, a company now in liquidation, with Jacqueline Fennessy listed as its only active director.
In June 2023, the venue hit the headlines when it was closed by environmental health due to a mouse infestation, but was then cleared to reopen days later.
Then in July, its unionised staff staged strike action demanding better pay and conditions. Unite at the time lauded them as the first bar workers to take formal industrial action in Scotland for over two decades, and customers were encouraged to boycott the venue.
Three days later, The 13th Note closed, with the loss of more than 20 jobs.
The basis of the tribunal arising from this situation is that the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act requires an employer considering redundancies amongst unionised staff to oversee the election of an employee representative and to then consult with that person on those redundancies and what might be done to minimise their impact on staff.
Presiding Judge Whitcombe ruled that, as this consultation process had not happened, the staff had been sacked unlawfully, and were thus due a compensatory award equivalent to the wages they would have received over the 90-day period starting July 19, 2023.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said: “Unite is pleased the workers at 13th Note have won their tribunal against their former employer after they were made redundant last year with absolutely no consultation.
“The ruling is a complete vindication for the workers who unionised in the face of shocking conditions which saw the venue shut by environmental health. As this case shows, Unite is unrelenting when it comes to defending our members’ interests and holding bad employers to account.”
At the time of the closure, Ms Fennessy had said she was ‘devastated’ by the situation, and claimed that the business had been ‘driven to insolvency’ by Unite.
She also cited the challenges of running an independent venue in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic and insisted the venue had no health and safety issues and that staff were paid above the living wage.
Commenting on this week’s tribunal outcome, lead union rep at The 13th Note, Nick Troy, rejected his former employer’s version of events: “We unionised to win a fairer and safer workplace at 13th Note but our employer did everything it could to stop us, including closing our workplace.
“When it came to sacking us, the company didn’t even have the decency to inform us first – issuing a press release to the media before telling the workers that they had lost their jobs.”
In Unite’s statement on the outcome, it indicates that those workers will now be focussing on taking over The 13th Note lease from Glasgow City Council, with the intention of reopening it as a venue.
“With justice served, we can now turn our focus onto taking the venue back into workers’ hands so that Glasgow has a unionised bar and music venue that pays and treats its workers with respect,” said Troy.
