[HacktionLab] Response from NUJ about legal support if one of our services comes under attack

[m3shrom]

> hi there,
>
> I wanted to contact you to see if you may be able to give me advice
> about legal support available to NUJ members.
>
> I'm a member of various tech collectives providing server space and
> other platforms to various campaigns and individuals. I am primarily
> an NUJ member for this reason.
>
> I wanted to find out what your recommendations would be for my
> colleagues and also if there may be a legal framework which would suit
> us if we wanted to defend ourselves against future legal problems.
>
> It would be great to be able to meet briefly about this in Manchester
> if appropriate or have a phone conversation about it if not.
>


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Hi Mick,

I'd be happy to meet up at a mutually convenient time and place, but
this reply may be as much as you need.

What follows should be understood to be a lay person's opinion and
therefore should not be relied upon as accurate, either legally or in
terms of union policy.

The union has a full time legal officer and we do offer legal advice and
support to members which usually has to be approved by the appropriate
union body - certainly if there are likely to be costs involved.

It often helps if a branch (Manchester?) gets behind the case.

In my view, if one or more colleagues of yours is or are the concerned
party or parties, then she, he or they would have to be members of the
union themselves - which presupposes that they'd qualify for membership.

But if you are involved as a member of a collective threatened with
legal action, then advice and support might be available to you
individually. I don't think we'd have any principled objection to
offering advice to you which might apply to the whole collective, but I
do think we would not wish to offer legal support to a collective of
whom only one member also belonged to the NUJ.

In general, the nature of the potential "legal problems" would be
relevant, too.

As far as "a legal framework which would suit" you is concerned, I don't
think we've considered anything like this before, although I may be
wrong. We'd certainly need more detail about the sort of thing you
envisage happening before we could even begin to offer advice.

If you want to take this matter further, please let me know.


Gary.