About 75 staff were at the meeting and voted unanimously on the motion, said an attendee speaking on condition of anonymity due to the internal nature of the discussion. About 1000 ABC staff are members of the media union, mostly in editorial positions, while other staff are members of the CPSU, the union for public sector workers.
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Staff at Wednesday’s meeting also urged the ABC to stop “wasting public funds” on its defence in Lattouf’s unfair dismissal case, to reinstate her to ABC radio and to apologise to her.
“We demand that ABC management implement staff calls for a fair and clear social media policy, robust and transparent complaints process and an audit to address the gender and race pay gap,” the group’s statement said.
In a text message from Oliver-Taylor to Anderson on the day of Lattouf’s dismissal, which was tendered in the Fair Work hearing, Oliver-Taylor claimed Lattouf had breached editorial policies and failed to follow a directive from a manager. These were given as the key reasons for the decision to dismiss her. However, Oliver-Taylor later told the hearing he was “still not sure whether there’s a breach or not”.
A group of ABC union staff passed a vote of no confidence in Anderson in January, in a meeting where global affairs editor John Lyons said he was “embarrassed to work for the ABC” after seeing reports of a series of leaked WhatsApp messages showing a letter-writing campaign from a group of pro-Israel lawyers pushing for Lattouf’s dismissal.
Oliver-Taylor joined the ABC from Netflix last July in the newly created role after the broadcaster last year reorganised its operations into separate news and content streams.
Last month, Lattouf launched a second case against the ABC in the Federal Court, alleging the broadcaster had breached its own workplace agreement by dismissing her for sharing a post from Human Rights Watch. The Fair Work case was heard this month. Deputy president Gerard Boyce is yet to hand down a decision.