Joy Johnson, UNITE Political Team

Joy Johnson's primary career has been in journalism working at ITN and BBC and as a regular contributor to Tribune. Joy worked for the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone as a political communicator and has lectured in journalism and communications. Joy currently works for Unite in its political department specialising in addressing the democratic deficit in Parliament by helping to get selected and elected those with trade union and working class values.

Martin Smith, GMB National Organiser

Martin started as a community organiser for Battersea and Wandsworth TUC in the mid 1990s before helping set up and run the TUC Organising Academy. As National Organiser for GMB since 2005 Martin has helped the unions substantial growth - building membership under Tory, Labour and Coalition governments and in times of both boom and bust.

Adrian Williamson QC

Adrian Williamson QC has practised as a commercial barrister since 1985. He completed his PhD at Cambridge in 2014, supervised by Professor Martin Daunton. This is now published as Conservative Economic Policymaking and the Birth of Thatcherism, 1964-1979 (Palgrave Macmillan: 2015). He has also published on the Bullock Report on Industrial Democracy.

Whyeda Gill-Mclure

Dr. Whyeda Gill-McLure worked as a trainee lawyer in the legal section of the European Commission after completing the Cambridge LLB. She is Senior Lecturer in Industrial Relations and HRM at the University of Wolverhampton Business School and has published on the impact of modernisation on public services.

She is currently writing a monograph for Routledge: ‘Employers under Austerity: A history of local government industrial relations 1991-Present’(forthcoming 2017 and guest-editing a special issue of Labor History to mark the centenary of the Whitley Reports 1917 (forthcoming 2017)

She is on the editorial board of Capital&Class and is co-founder of the West Midlands Conference of Socialist Economists

Paul Scholey, Head of Employment Rights Team, Morrish Solicitors

Paul began working for Trades Unions in 1988 when he joined Morrish Solicitors LLP (then Morrish & Co) and was made a Partner in 1992.

He is Head of Morrish Solicitors “Employment Rights Team”.

In October 2010 he was appointed Senior Partner of the firm.

He has represented Unions and their members in many walks of life – from banking to transport, and education to textiles manufacture.

His firm acts for 20 Unions and staff associations across the UK. He handles all types of employment matters but has a particular interest in industrial action law and social media-related cases.

He speaks frequently on employment law issues, was guest lecturer in employment law at Leeds Law School, and for 5 years was until recently Chair of the Leeds Citizens Advice Bureau.

Dave Lewis, Professor of Employment Law, Middlesex University

Professor of Employment Law David Law gained an LLB (Hons) from the London School of Economics and an MA in Industrial Relations from the University of Warwick. He also holds a Diploma in Personnel Management.

He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the Industrial Law Society and the Association of Law Teachers, and is a Member of the Institute of Employment Rights and the Society of Legal Scholars.

After starting out as a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Law at Middlesex Polytechnic, before becoming a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Law at Middlesex University, he then moved to Australia and taught at the University of Wollongong.

He then rejoined Middlesex as a Reader in Employment Law in 1993 and has also since worked as a Visiting Researcher at the Fafo Institute for Labour and Social Research in Oslo, Norway.

David also makes regular media appearances to discuss his specialist subjects of unfair dismissal and whistleblowing. In this field, he is the Convener of the International Whistleblowing Research Network, runs the annual Middlesex University Whistleblowing Award and is the head of the Whistleblowing Research Unit at Middlesex.