The
'open space' for trade union debate
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Whatever
happened to recognition?
Wednesday
12 July 2006, 12.45 till 4.30, Congress House
Unions
21 looked at trade union recgonition and asked "How was it for you?"
during this half-day seminar in London.
l-r Alan Leighton (Prospect),
Mary Bousted (ATL), John Lloyd (Chair, Unions 21), Claire Ruhemann (LRD)
Six years after gaining union rights to statutory recognition, over 1,000 agreements have been signed covering more than 310,000 employees. Only 61 agreements were signed last year but the number of campaigns for recognition is on the increase.
This Unions 21 seminar looked at the current trends in union recognition and heard the experiences of representatives from across the movement. The 1999 Employment Relations Act changed the climate of industrial relations, saw an initial surge in trade union recognition and has affected the way trade unions work towards recognition.
Clare Ruhemann from the Labour Research Department suggested that before the law was introduced, direct approaches could be made to the employers by trade unions pursuing recognition but that the focus now was on a bottom-up strategy that focused on organising and recruitment of members.
Mary Bousted, ATL's General Secretary, described her union's unique experience in gaining recognition in the independent school sector. The particular culture and environment in independent schools - where the teachers often live as well as work - obliged ATL to work closely on building up an activist base that was needed to win and work with recognition. ATL secured a hard won recognition deal at a private school in the South West, that went all the way to the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC), and ultimately revealed the positive effects of trade union recognition.
Prior to the agreement the union had been devoting a lot of officer time to resolving issues at the school due to a poor employment culture and bad practices. Recognition changed all this and both the members and the employer noticed the positive role of the union.
Recognition is only a starting point though. It should open up the door to drawing up learning agreements, introducing health & safety representatives and to the union playing such a significant role in the workplace that it "makes it hard for the employer to work without the union".
Alan
Leighton, National Secretary at Prospect, 
continued
this theme - noting that "it's easier to defend recognition if the employer
sees the benefit." But he was under no illusion of what it takes to get
to that stage as he spoke about the challenges of overturning de-recognition
at the National Maritime Museum. As well as a strong membership base,
one of the key factors to securing recognition is identifying the right
issues to campaign around - recognition in itself is not an end sufficient
enough to galvanise the membership or persuade employers of its value.
In some campaigns Prospect had made strategic use of personal cases.
A campaign has to be focused, well-resourced and able to respond quickly, which, in Leighton's experience, is easier where it is just a single-union campaign. It also depends on committed and effective union representatives in the workplace, which means the union has to provide appropriate training for activists.
Mark
Sandell from UCU agreed that workplace reps were vital to a successful
campaign and was of the view that they should guide the campaign and be
a visible champion for the union in the workplace. As an organiser for
both NATFHE and 
previously
at the GPMU, he had broad experience of the tactics used by unscrupulous
employers in fighting against recognition - changing the bargaining group,
enforcing ballots then bombarding the workforce with anti-union propaganda
and delaying the procedure at every turn.
Christine Hardacre, Head of Organising at Community, is all too familiar with many of these union-busting methods - even coming up against a Managing Director with a PhD on "exterminating" trade unions! She had welcomed the legislation as a way to sort out some unfinished business following de-recognition in the 80s and 90s.
Now, unions had to be sophisticated in winning for their members and recognise the limits of pursuing recognition as an end in itself. Community's current campaign in Ladbrokes was just such an example. The nature of the betting industry means that formal recognition is a long way down the line. Community has had to find other ways of getting 'leverage' over the employer. Successes had been achieved by working with external partners - such as the work with the Metropolitan Police on safety. Members needed to see that "everywhere the employer goes, we go too."
Alan Leighton and Tony Burke, Amicus Assistant General Secretary, both talked about the existing legislative powers that are available to unions, such as the Information & Consultation Regulations, that could be used as a stepping-stone to recognition. I&C can put unions face-to-face with anti-union employers or provide information about their operations. Leighton was particularly interested in how consultation could be turned into negotiation. Mary Bousted also referred to an "incremental approach" to building towards recognition, where the union gets through the door using existing rights such as I&C or the grievance procedures.
Tony
Burke described the problems the GPMU and now Amicus have with the CAC
procedure and emphasised how voluntary recognition is far better than
the default statutory recognition that is awarded. He believes that the
procedure could be greatly simplified - for example where unions can prove
that they have 50%+1 members at a workplace should be sufficient on its
own to secure recognition and that workplaces of less than 20 employees
should come under the legislation.
But Mark Sandell suggested the problems unions faced through the CAC procedure are just a small demonstration of a wider need for greater trade union rights and that tinkering with the CAC rules would be like "solving the housing crisis by looking at cardboard boxes."
There has been a significant "shadow effect" from the legislation, which has led to many more voluntary recognition agreements being signed. Mary Bousted commented that "one formal victory at the CAC stimulates voluntary action".
All the speakers agreed that gaining union recognition in the workplace should just be seen as a starting point and that it should be far more than just a piece of paper. After recognition, unions needed to continue to train and support their workplace reps, to maintain and build membership and to engage with the employer. Unions should not be complacent having gained recognition but they clearly have a good story - they need to go out and tell it.
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