Trade Union Bill (First sitting)

James Cartlidge Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Chris Stephens]

Q 8 Part of the difficulty, though, is that the notice for compulsory redundancy is now 45 days. The danger of the Bill—I am curious to hear your views on this—is that trade unions will have to ballot right away when an employer issues a statutory redundancy notice, because it is now 45 days. Given the timescale, does it not worry you that there will actually be more balloting, rather than less?

John Cridland: For employers, we are trying to get the principle of clear consent. If a trade union and its members are going to withdraw their labour, which is clearly their right, we want to see evidence of consent in those situations. The difficulty with the current legislation is that it can leave employers faced with a situation where there is a low turnout—we have already heard the situation that Dr Marshall described of a ballot, prior to a situation where the ballot was some period before. These are not giving clear signals to the employer. So the spirit of our evidence is, “Can we have a system that both in time and in signalling makes it much clearer to the employers the nature of the dispute, and allows the employer to deal with that?” That is what we are after.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

Q 9It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. Dr Marshall, you raised the point about productivity, and I just want to ask about some of the wider economic impact of the Bill, if it is passed—in particular, the impact on investment, including inward investment, and on making the UK an attractive place to invest, and perhaps, Mr Martin, in terms of your industry, on whether having greater confidence about industrial relations will enable you to have stronger management and therefore attract more investment into it.

Dr Adam Marshall: Many thanks for the question. Undoubtedly, businesses that believe that the framework for industrial relations is modern and secure will be more confident when it becomes time to invest, particularly in those industries, such as the one represented by Mr Martin, that are affected by some of the enhanced thresholds that this Bill puts in place.

We have been very supportive of the definition of which areas should fall under those enhanced thresholds, in part because those businesses are extremely capital-intensive and do things that are extremely important to the functioning of the broader business community. So whether we are talking about transport, the delivery of energy supplies and indeed—vis-à-vis the supply of future skills—whether we are talking about the education sector, these are things that have a huge knock-on effect on the rest of the economy. So we believe that these measures are proportionate to help with that particular challenge.

Vis-à-vis our attractiveness to overseas businesses, one only needs to look at the media impact of transport strikes in London—how they are reported—and what you see are the knock-on effects on the economy of this particular area, and of course we have seen that played out in other cities as well, right across the UK. That has a deterrent effect on would-be investors, and I think that we would see that deterrent effect being lessened with a modernised system.

[James Cartlidge]

Q 10 Mr Martin has obviously had some experience of industrial action. If his management were more confident in the future that there would be less disruption, would that enable his company to attract more investment, to expand and all those things that we want to see across industry?

David Martin: Undoubtedly. It is an obvious statement but investment is all about confidence, and confidence breeds a situation where, from my viewpoint, effective trade union relationships and effective employee relations are a fundamental part of what we do. We employ 60,000 people all across Europe—25,000 people in the UK—and those relations are fundamental to us. And we deliver passenger journeys to more than 2 billion people a year, so we are fundamentally a massive part of overall GDP in local areas and in national areas. Clearly, if confidence is higher, then investment undoubtedly will reflect that.

Would that be a major issue? Frankly, I would say that it would not be, because it would not stop us investing. It is up to us as a management team to manage our industrial relations practices, but if it all goes wrong and it comes to it, I think it is absolutely fair that a proper mandate is there with our trade union colleagues to leverage their position on behalf of the employees.

[The Chair]

If you want to ask a question, try to give us plenty of warning, so that we can fit you all in. It is going well at the moment; I hope that we will get everyone in.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Chair]

I know that our next question will be very brief and to the point and our trade union team will give just one quick answer.

[James Cartlidge]

Q 63 I want to ask John Hannett—I know you are on the Low Pay Commission and that you have many workers at Tesco, many of whom will be mums, who work part-time, probably at the lower end of the pay scale. I am sure that you will agree they are precisely the sorts of people who suffer when the local school closes or when buses are on strike and that—going back to the thresholds, which is the most important part of the Bill—it is in their interests that we have very reasonable thresholds. On that basis, would you agree that the thresholds that we are putting forward are reasonable?

John Hannett: Well, I think you have to look not just at the thresholds in isolation but at access and balloting arrangements and that was the answer that we gave before. In terms of Tesco and people on low pay, the reality is that strikes are very small in number in the UK, which has been demonstrated over many years. What I think is missing, which is the general point that I would make—and I made the point about control mechanisms—is encouraging good industrial relations, partnership and the stuff that Roy and I are doing. It is all about a race to the bottom. The people who work in Tesco, of course they want to be able to take their children to school but the fact that there is a dispute means that the best emphasis is on how you resolve the dispute.

Everything that I heard in the Bill is about thresholds, mechanisms, control mechanisms—I have also been on the ACAS council for a number of years and all my training, which I believe applies to trade unions, is to solve the disputes. The first thing you do when you go on strike is to try to avoid it by using your mechanisms and your procedures. However, if you do end up in a strike position, there is not a trade union leader I know—or there should be no trade union leader—who takes strike action easily or recommends it. It is a very serious position to take; people lose money, or potentially lose their jobs. That is why think you will find, overall, unions are problem solvers, not problem causers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Stephens]

Q 85 I have several questions. First, do you agree that there is a danger in introducing thresholds—the impact that it will have on some gender equality issues, for example? Shift changes impact workers trying to pursue equal pay issues and the like. Secondly, is there a new danger of public bodies having to reissue new, individual contracts on the basis of opportunities to check-off and those sorts of issues? Do you see any impact on the devolved Administrations given that your organisation has offices across the UK?

Stephen Cavalier: First, on the equality point, the TUC has already submitted evidence. There is a disproportionate impact of thresholds on women workers; it is absolutely clear that there is a discriminatory impact. On the question of check-off and facility time, we are also a large employer. We have check-off and facility time and we are pleased to do so. It is something that we have agreed with our workforce and it works very well for us. I very much endorse the comments made in a 2012 paper by called “Stop the Union-Bashing” by Robert Halfon MP, who says that Whitehall should not dictate to employers and that it should be a matter for employers to agree facility time. I commend that paper to the Committee. It is certainly right that employers should agree facility time and check-off. It is a matter for them.

There are serious issues here associated with the devolved Administrations. As I understand it, they have the right to determine these arrangements within their own spheres. This does cut across that, and it does so in a very negative way. It is very concerning that the impact assessment itself—in fact, I think the European convention assessment that the Government have produced says specifically that this removal of existing contractual arrangements and collective agreements may have retrospective effect. That is a serious potential breach of article 1, protocol 1 of the European convention.

[James Cartlidge]

Q 86 Thank you both for coming. You have both spoken about thresholds and their potential impact, but neither of you seem to have focused on the key point that matters to the country at large, which is that it is so unfair to our commuters, our parents and so on that their public services can be brought down for days on low turnouts. We heard earlier from Arriva that on a 17% ballot, 50% of their buses were out for a day, causing massive disruption to its passengers. Do you not accept, in principle, that it is right to deal with that?

Mike Emmott: Our view is that although it is conceivable that the increased threshold will influence the outcome in some cases, it is quite unclear whether it is going to make striking more or less likely. There are lots of way of causing problems. We do not have a view on whether or not the thresholds are right in principle. We simply take the view that they are just as likely to cause more trouble as they are to reduce it.

[James Cartlidge]

Q 87 The point is not whether it makes it more or less likely, in my view. The point is that if the strike goes ahead with the sort of turnout we will require, the public are much more likely to accept it. That is surely the point. At the moment, these strikes are happening on a very low turnout. Do you accept that we are right to deal with that?

Stephen Cavalier: Can I come in on that premise? The Regulatory Policy Committee has said that there is no evidence that the thresholds would have that impact. Strikes are not going ahead on those low thresholds. One particular example was given by a colleague from Arriva, and what he said about inward investment in response to the question was very interesting. The fact of the matter is that the current legislation and the current situation have not prevented the Governments of France, Germany, Holland and other countries from investing in the UK rail network and owning train operating companies. There simply is not that problem.

[James Cartlidge]

Q 88 So you do not think we should be doing anything about thresholds. You think it is right that schools, buses and other major public services can be brought down for a day or more on the basis of very low turnouts. In principle, do you think that is fair?

Stephen Cavalier: There is not a problem on low turnouts, and the way to tackle turnouts that has been suggested is workplace ballots and electronic ballots.

Mike Emmott: Simply, if you have a ballot, the unions are going to take into account the likely response by members and choose situations where they are more likely to win rather than lose, and why not? Once you get a big majority in favour and it is clear and transparent, I think that legitimises the action. Whether it makes it more acceptable I am quite doubtful of, but you have to take account of the fact that you may be pulling in members who actually support the action that is being called rather than appealing to some supposedly moderate majority who do not want it.

[The Chair]

The last question will be from Stephen Doughty.