Union boss had bullying complaints upheld months before promotion to top job
THE HEAD of one of the country’s largest trade unions was found to have bullied and harassed a woman a year before he took the top job.
An investigation by the Sunday Mail has discovered evidence that Gary Smith, who was the GMB’s Scottish secretary at the time, had four counts of wrongdoing upheld against him.But despite the recommendations of an external HR consultant that he should be disciplined, he was elected to the £148,000-a-year top job at the head of the GMB months later in June 2021.And the GMB’s most senior woman, Barbara Plant - described by Smith as “the union’s moral compass” – is alleged to have failed to take any steps to intervene in his rise to the top job despite knowing he was in the middle of the disciplinary process.The Sunday Mail has spoken to more than a dozen people with knowledge of the investigation, the issuing of gagging orders to staff involved and the hiring of lawyers and KCs to try and improve the GMB but most were too afraid to speak out.The revelations come at a time of increased scrutiny of the GMB and how they’ve handled bullying and sexual harassment allegations including protests from staff at inaction over a report in 2020 from a KC which found the union “institutionally sexist”.The details about Smith’s bullying and harassment are contained in documents seen by the Sunday Mail from July 2020.The documents show how he was found to have subjected a senior GMB woman to a campaign of bullying and harassment which included spreading malicious rumours about her, subjecting her to unnecessary levels of scrutiny, unfairly suggesting she had committed financial wrongdoing and undermined her in front of her colleagues.
All of the complaints against him were upheld.Two months after Smith became General Secretary the woman signed an NDA and is believed to have received a significant sum in order to drop employment tribunals she had lodged against GMB as a result of her treatment.Sources have confirmed the woman was paid off under an
