A former employee of Britain’s biggest union has been sacked as a ‘trustee director’ of its pension scheme after alleging discrimination against 350 retired members of its staff who are in their 80s. Dave Marsh says he was informed he had been ‘removed’ from the role by Alex Ryan, the pension secretary of Unite the Union’s pension scheme (UPS) in a telephone conversation.
The union has confirmed Mr Marsh ‘was removed from his unpaid position after evidently sharing confidential trustee information’. Mr Marsh has served as a trustee director of the scheme since 2015 and says that since then he has been re-elected every three years by more than 2,300 pensioners – the “largest constituency in the scheme”, he said.
The 73-year-old accused Unite of ‘vindictive and spiteful’ discrimination against the 350 pensioners over the refusal by the UPS to up their payouts. Mr Marsh, from Salford, was a union official based in Manchester from 1977 until he took voluntary redundancy in 2005. But he continued as a trustee director and is also one of the people affected, MEN reports.
