More help needed in fight for Rhetta's reinstatement

The NUJ is asking for continued support in the campaign to win reinstatement for sacked Salford university researcher Rhetta Moran and to complain about the extraordinarily slow internal procedures being used to deal with this case.

The union is calling for new protests to be sent vice chancellor Michael Harloe at m.harloe@salford.ac.uk to complain about the fact that a sex discrimination complaint, which Rhetta tabled before she was sacked in January, has not yet been fully investigated.

There is also an outstanding grievance from July 2004, for which the university is planning an appeal hearing in January 2006.

Following reports some people who previously protested to Professor Harloe were told that the NUJ had lied in statements over Rhetta's case, and suggested that the university was planning to sue the union for defamation, northern organiser, Miles Barter, has moved to reassure members.

"I would like to assure you that no such legal action has been started and that the NUJ stands by everything it has been saying about the case. We are continuing to hand out the leaflet which was complained about - indeed a slightly modified version was given out in Manchester this week at an event in which Salford University participated."

Fact file

Because of incompetence in the university no-one was allocated to supervise the post graduate students who had been working with Rhetta. Many of these fee paying students have given up or transferred to other colleges - costing Salford money.

In July 2004, the university told Rhetta to stop putting in any new research bids

After being paid for almost two years, the university stopped pursuing payment from Salford Primary Care Trust for Rhetta's mentoring and action learning work in the Salford Refugee and Asylum Participatory Action Research project

To push through Rhetta's dismissal, university bosses gave up a £192,316 research grant from the European Social Fund which she had negotiated. That money is lost to Salford for ever.

Salford head of personnel Malcolm Willis said that he did not know the law on redundancy when he used it to sack Rhetta.

A document was produced which demonstrated that managers had been warned to think twice about giving Rhetta a permanent job because she was a trade union rep.

Rhetta's line manager told the hearing she was one of the best researchers he had ever worked with.