The GMB union is facing fresh claims of bullying behaviour, after the female leader of a rival Labour-linked union accused its officials of trying to push her out of her job in a way that affected her health.
Maryam Eslamdoust, the first ever female leader of the TSSA transport union and a former mayor of Camden council, said the actions of GMB officials caused her significant stress and suggested that a male leader would not have been treated in the same way.
The GMB has been representing TSSA staff in industrial disputes against the union and argues that Eslamdoust is presiding over very poor staff morale, with “horrifying” staff survey results in which 90% described it as a “psychologically unsafe” place to work.
Speaking to the Guardian, Eslamdoust said she believed the GMB was acting in a hostile way towards her leadership in order to attempt a takeover of the TSSA, which with about 18,000 members is much smaller. The GMB is one of Labour’s biggest donors, with more than 550,000 members, including Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves.
It has recently faced internal claims of bullying, which it denies, and has for years been working to improve its culture after being found by an independent report in 2020 to be “institutionally sexist”.
In a meeting in September, Eslamdoust said a senior GMB official caused significant stress to her and her assistant general secretary Maria Fawcett by “shouting at me, shouting at my assistant general secretary, wagging his finger in our faces, and threatening to damage our reputation if we didn’t comply with his demands”. She has now banned the official from entering the TSSA.
After making a formal complaint about the official, she said GMB’s London regional secretary, Warren Kenny, sent what she described as an “appalling” email questioning her decision to raise a complaint.
The email added: “I am not in possession of all the ‘facts’ surrounding your ‘complaint’ but once I am, I will of course send you a more formal response. Until then, it may be more productive for you and your management team to focus on resolving the many outstanding concerns which have been raised by your staff and our members at TSSA … I would suggest this direction would be a more effective way of engaging with GMB colleagues than to seek to raise ‘complaints’ regarding alleged conduct.”
Eslamdoust said she believed she had paid a high personal cost in relation to stress in the workplace. She said: “I’m starting to experience the stress and the constant interference in my work that the GMB has put me through. The personal cost of the bullying is profound.
“It has caused lasting harm. I routinely work from eight in the morning to 11 o’clock at night, if not longer, and that’s just simply to manage the union, protect my union’s reputation and defend myself from constant interference and aggression by the GMB.”
She also questioned whether Gary Smith, the GMB general secretary, was fit to lead the union. He will battle to be re-elected this year, with the nominations process under way.
“I believe that he’s tacitly condoning the behaviours on the ground because GMB officials would not act with such impunity unless they believed they were protected by the senior leadership,” she said.
Eslamdoust, a former head of equalities at the Labour party, has been in post since 2023 when she took over after the dismissal of Manuel Cortes for gross misconduct.
She added: “I don’t see GMB behaving this way towards unions where the general secretary is a man. There was no comparable hostility with the TSSA when it was led by a male general secretary and when those cultural issues were happening.”
She also questioned why the GMB was accusing her of overseeing a “toxic” culture when she had been implementing a lawyer-led review of the culture under her predecessor, although she acknowledged morale among staff was low.
Eslamdoust said GMB had “no moral authority on those issues” given it had not fully implemented its own Monaghan report recommendations about misogyny.
A GMB spokesperson said: “Workers at the TSSA have been mistreated for years.
“A recent staff survey revealed horrifying levels of stress and anxiety, with almost 90% describing TSSA as a ‘psychologically unsafe’ place to work. Meanwhile, a GMB representative is currently suspended for trade union activities.
“GMB is duty bound to protect members from this kind of workplace environment – no matter who the employer is.”
They added that the GMB had previously decided not to merge with the TSSA, saying: “The GMB union was approached by the TSSA’s own members to explore the possibility of merging.
“When this was explored more by GMB members, due diligence revealed serious issues. Members then voted unanimously to stop the merger process.”
