GOAN members of the GMB union at Swindon’s Great Western Hospital visited colleagues in their homes and threatened their children, claimed former senior supervisor Christine Woods at an industrial tribunal.

During another emotional day under cross examination at an industrial tribunal in Bristol yesterday she also claimed that Carillion workers at the hospital had been intimidated into joining the union.

She said that some had been handed blank pieces of paper to sign and that when she went to the hospital last week some didn't even know about the tribunal.

Challenged by Oliver Segal QC, counsel for the GMB as to why she had not included these allegations in her formal statements to the tribunal, she said: “I am just saying what I have been told.”

Mr Segal asked why she thought Goan staff members had made serious allegations about her during an internal Carrillion investigation.

Her voice trembling with emotion and at times holding her head in her hands she said she did not understand why people she had worked with were now telling lies about her.

Was she suggesting people had been told to lie to the tribunal, Mr Segal asked, asking who her informants were.

“I refuse to divulge any names because there is fear in the community,” Ms Woods replied.

She was questioned at length about posts critical of immigrants on her Facebook account, after she had submitted a fresh statement to the tribunal about it.

She said she had not been aware that her posts were public until a friend’s child had recently pointed out how to keep them private.

Reflecting on the content of her account Mr Segal wanted to know why she felt it was disgraceful for British companies to be encouraged to take on foreign workers, She said her brother works abroad and it didn’t happen there, and there should be more fairness here.

“Why would you feel that you are being made to feel a second-class citizen when immigrants who considered themselves British were waving the flag?” he asked.

“It’s not easy getting the services you need,” she said. “I was out of work, and we don’t always get what we need.”

“That has got nothing to do with a post that says the white British are being penalised at the expense of non non-white immigrants and that the white British should stand up against it,” said Mr Segal.

Ms Woods denied that she was a racist and said that she had even gone to her MP to help get someone into the country.

Faced with a series of accusations that she treated her Goan staff differently to their white colleagues she was said: “You are making me out to be an ogre. But I was compassionate. If I could help I would.”

She denied asking for a gift in return for allowing a Goan worker to extend her holiday by a day because her mother had died, but agreed that she had been given a gold anklet by the woman. She denied it was worth hundreds of pounds.

“I had it valued,” she said. “ I was told it would have cost about £25 in India.”

She also denied curtailing a man’s overtime after he had refused to comply with an instruction to contribute £5 to a colleague’s wedding present.

She acknowledged that in 2009 he had brought her back two bottles of vanilla vodka and two packs of cigarettes from Goa but said she had not asked for them as a thank you for giving him overtime.

Ms Woods said she had studied the phenomenon known as ‘mobbing’ and felt she had been a victim of a campaign to isolate and discredit her.

Counsel for the GMB suggested that the evidence against her might indicate that it was the other way round.

Cross examination of Ms Woods is expected to end today