First Union organiser Edith Tamaki loses fight to win back job after complaint email

First Union has more than 10,500 members working in Countdown’s supermarkets and distribution centres. The workers comprise half the union's members in retail, finance and commerce. Photo / Dean Purcell

A union organiser dismissed for sending a scathing email alleging Māori members were treated as “excrement” has failed to get her job back, for now.

Edith Tamaki was sacked from First Union in December last year for serious misconduct after the October 17 email that went to all organisers and managers.

The email was headed “Behaviour of Paid Union Officials” and written in Tamaki’s capacity as the Āhipa Māori - an elected position established to support the work of the union’s rūnanga in promoting the involvement and representation of Māori members - according to an Employment Relations Authority decision.

Tamaki, an organiser at the union for 16 years, said in the email “unbecoming behaviour” from some paid union officials had marred recent national negotiations of the Countdown supermarket collective agreement.

In her email, Tamaki, who worked in the union’s retail, finance and commerce (RFC) division, said she had received complaints about “abuse towards a group of team members of the Countdown bargaining team”.

She said those members’ voices were “ignored”, “smirked at”, belittled and singled out in front of the rest of the team and those members felt as though they “were treated differently from those who aren’t people of colour”.

Tamaki said they were “lectured and threatened” that if they did not “toe the line with the lead advocate” they could be removed from the bargaining team.

She described those members as “being treated as excrement by paid officials”.

The email went on to state some team members had made a complaint but Tamaki questioned whether they could trust their concerns were being investigated.

She finished saying she knew her email would upset some people but the union was “going down the drain”.

Dennis Maga, First Union general secretary, said he removed three organisers from the Countdown collective bargaining team last year. Photo / NZME

In an affidavit to the ERA, First Union general secretary Dennis Maga described difficulties during bargaining held through July, August and September 2022 for the new collective agreement with Countdown.

Tensions within the bargaining team, comprising union delegates and union organisers, resulted in Maga removing three organisers from the bargaining team.

Just over an hour after Tamaki’s email was sent Maga emailed Tamaki instructing her to recall the email and tell recipients to delete it.

She had 24 hours to comply but did not and later told the ERA she did not see the instruction before the deadline.

On October 18 Maga initiated disciplinary proceedings with a letter proposing to suspend Tamaki and outlining his concerns that her email:

• Made serious allegations that other staff members, identifiable by recipients, had treated members like “excrement”;
• Included excerpts from a national executive report that should not have been disclosed;
• Suggested management was acting in a biased manner about the upcoming election for a new RFC secretary;
• And that staff members were punished for raising concerns.

He proposed a disciplinary meeting in three days but Tamaki responded that she could not attend on that date as she was on a gradual return to work programme following back surgery.

Over the course of the next six weeks, Maga tried to meet with Tamaki several times while extending the timeframe for her to respond to the allegations.

On November 21 Tamaki sent Maga a medical certificate that recommended a further two weeks’ leave due to “significant ongoing workplace stress”.

Maga responded that his preliminary view was that Tamaki had committed serious misconduct and proposed summary dismissal.

Tamaki engaged a lawyer who asked that the process be put on hold but Maga said a decision would be made on December 1.

On November 28 Maga received emails from five delegates who had attended the Countdown bargaining, who complained about discussions within the union’s bargaining team.

Four of them had raised those concerns with Tamaki and one email included a complaint to her in September but Maga said he’d never seen the complaint and Tamaki’s inaction in dealing with those issues had “knowingly undermined the union”.

Tamaki’s lawyer, David Fleming, told Maga she was being “shut down” for raising concerns expressed by Māori members and was being treated differently from another member of the management group who had made public comments critical of Tamaki and other organisers.

He called for Maga to “step aside” while an independent investigation was conducted but Maga said Tamaki had had since October 18 to respond.

On December 7, after Fleming requested a further extension, Maga dismissed Tamaki for serious misconduct.

Five days later Fleming raised personal grievances of unjustified disadvantage and unjustified dismissal and applied for Tamaki to be reinstated in the interim while the case went through the ERA.

In making his determination authority member Robin Arthur assessed the strengths and weaknesses of Tamaki’s case.

Although his provisional conclusions were based on untested affidavit evidence, Arthur found Tamaki’s argument that she was too sick to fully participate in the disciplinary process was weak after Maga provided a detailed analysis of the traffic in her work email account.

It showed that from when the concerns were raised on October 18 Tamaki had regularly forwarded relevant emails to her personal Gmail account, gathered information relating to the allegations and drafted and edited responses to Maga’s queries.

He also found it was not unreasonable for First Union to go ahead with the dismissal on December 5 because of the extensions of time given and correspondence from Maga.

In her affidavit in support of her application for interim reinstatement, Tamaki said losing her job meant she was unable to afford the basics to live.

However, Maga said Tamaki was paid more than $12,500 in final pay and the union allowed her to keep her mobile phone and provided her with a laptop for private use.

With regard to reinstatement, Arthur said there was reason to doubt that a sufficiently harmonious and co-operative working relationship could be established if Tamaki were reinstated on an interim basis.

In an affidavit in March Tamaki described those upset by her email as “the ones dishing it out, not me” and said she didn’t believe her email “had anything like the effect they are making it out to have”.

Arthur said this was a “combative rather than conciliatory approach”.

“It did not express a level of insight helpful for the practical process of restoring working relationships in the interim period,” he said.

Tamaki appeared to have the support of some colleagues but not others and confining and monitoring her would not suit the role of an organiser, Arthur said.

“An order for interim reinstatement was not in the interests of justice in this case,” he said.

The application was declined and costs were reserved pending the outcome of the substantive investigation into the personal grievances set down for August, with a decision expected in October.

Tamaki told the Herald she could not yet comment on the case.