Beware the union rep

[Michael Loveridge]

I subscribe to an employment lawyer called Daniel Barnett, and I thought I'd share the following email I received from him this morning:

From October 2026, if a union asks to come into your workplace to recruit members and you refuse, you will need to justify that refusal. If the Central Arbitration Committee disagrees with you, it can impose access terms. If you then obstruct access, the penalties escalate: £75,000 for a first breach, £150,000 for a second, and up to £500,000 for a third and subsequent breach - which can be repeated for continued non-compliance.

The draft Code also expects employers to switch off CCTV during union meetings and to ensure recordings are not viewed or retained. If you operate in a heavily surveilled environment, that creates an operational headache that needs thinking through now.

Welcome to Labour's Brave New World.

 

[Newchodge]

I subscribe to an employment lawyer called Daniel Barnett, and I thought I'd share the following email I received from him this morning:

From October 2026, if a union asks to come into your workplace to recruit members and you refuse, you will need to justify that refusal. If the Central Arbitration Committee disagrees with you, it can impose access terms. If you then obstruct access, the penalties escalate: £75,000 for a first breach, £150,000 for a second, and up to £500,000 for a third and subsequent breach - which can be repeated for continued non-compliance.

The draft Code also expects employers to switch off CCTV during union meetings and to ensure recordings are not viewed or retained. If you operate in a heavily surveilled environment, that creates an operational headache that needs thinking through now.

Welcome to Labour's Brave New World.

Beware the union rep if you have something to be ashamed of in the way you treat your staff.

 

[FreddyG]

The union rep is very welcome to come past. Everyone who works here, mostly works from home. Many are not even in the UK, so he/she will have to take a flight to the US and/or Germany. Others are in such handy places as Thurso and Ashford - and no, I am not giving out names, etc. over the phone or via email, (GDPR and all that jazz) so good luck with that one!

 

[Justin Smith]

Beware the union rep if you have something to be ashamed of in the way you treat your staff.

That is a tendentious post if ever I read one. Surely if an employer has any employees (i.e. manages to keep employees who can leave at any time if they want to) then, by defintion, they cannot be badly treated ?

 

[Newchodge]

That is a tendentious post if ever I read one. Surely if an employer has any employees (i.e. manages to keep employees who can leave at any time if they want to) then, by defintion, they cannot be badly treated ?

Yeah, right. Have you seen the huge number of employees whose employers failed to pay them the minimum wage? People may stay in jobs because they have no alternative, and employers can exploit them because they know that.

 

[FreddyG]

Yeah, right. Have you seen the huge number of employees whose employers failed to pay them the minimum wage? People may stay in jobs because they have no alternative, and employers can exploit them because they know that.

Sadly, it does not work like that. If I tell a customer that the price is X and they do not have X, but £100 less, that is the new price.

The real problem for the UK economy is that the minimum wage, the working wage, and the median income are all converging (or bunching up) at the bottom. Unskilled labour £26k; Modal £28k and median £39k. In real purchasing power, the cost of unskilled labour is today one-quarter of the 1960 price.

The result is that the average customer today has far less spending power. This lack trickles all the way through the SME economy.

 

[tony84]

Welcome to Labour's Brave New World.

Bloody Labour giving employees rights!
Those employees should be happy they have a job!

Wasnt it labour who introduced minimum wage?

Wasnt it unions who obtained weekends and holiday pay?

As an employee, I quite liked my weekends and holidays.
As an employer, I dont mind paying people an amount they can live on or taking weekends off.


Unions are only really needed for dodgy companies anyway. Every disciplinary I have had (yes, I had a few in my 20s) I went in on my own and fought my own corner. I tended to do better than many of those who relied on a union rep.

 

[Mark T Jones]

Bloody Labour giving employees rights!
Those employees should be happy they have a job!

Wasnt it labour who introduced minimum wage?

Wasnt it unions who obtained weekends and holiday pay?

As an employee, I quite liked my weekends and holidays.
As an employer, I dont mind paying people an amount they can live on or taking weekends off.


Unions are only really needed for dodgy companies anyway. Every disciplinary I have had (yes, I had a few in my 20s) I went in on my own and fought my own corner. I tended to do better than many of those who relied on a union rep.

I agree

I think fear of unions largely harps back to the '70s and '80s, when certain union leaders got a bit power-crazed.

In reality unions, done properly are a valuable conduit between 'them' and 'us' and can save a lot of trouble.

 

[tony84]

When I worked for a bank, we were told we were getting a pay rise - bit of a rubbish one.
Union got involved, they got nothing. They said they needed more members.

A year later we were told our pensions were being made worse.
Union got involved. Did nothing and told us there were not enough members.


I dont really rate unions, but would never stop people accessing one - but then again, I dont worry about staff going to a union to get something they want as I tend to treat people in the way I would want to be.

Except a manager who I once called useless in front of about 30-40 colleagues. I was dragged to a disciplinary (understandably) and when he seen me coming to the meeting with a pile of A4 paper which I told him were examples I had of his uselessness, he decided to drop the grievance... Which just confirmed I was right... The A4 paper was blank paper I took from the printer to write down notes

 

[Newchodge]

Sadly, it does not work like that. If I tell a customer that the price is X and they do not have X, but £100 less, that is the new price.

What has that got to do with employers ripping off employees?

 

[frankie007]

I have done some agency work recently as a chef in a hot new London restaurant. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. 9am start 11pm finish, back to back 14 hour shifts no breaks, eat on your feet. There are a lot of employers out there taking a piss

 

[Justin Smith]

Bloody Labour giving employees rights!
Those employees should be happy they have a job!

Wasnt it labour who introduced minimum wage?

Wasnt it unions who obtained weekends and holiday pay?

As an employee, I quite liked my weekends and holidays.
As an employer, I dont mind paying people an amount they can live on or taking weekends off.


Unions are only really needed for dodgy companies anyway. Every disciplinary I have had (yes, I had a few in my 20s) I went in on my own and fought my own corner. I tended to do better than many of those who relied on a union rep.

Employees have the ultimate right, the right to say "sod off I'm not working for you any more".
Every job I ever had if I thought I wasn't paid enough or I wasn't being treated well enough I didn't moan* and complain to a union, I just left and got another job. And that's how the free market works.

* Well OK, yes I did moan, but I did something about it. It's moaners who don't do anything about the thing they're moaning about are the ones that annoy me....

 

[Justin Smith]

I have done some agency work recently as a chef in a hot new London restaurant. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. 9am start 11pm finish, back to back 14 hour shifts no breaks, eat on your feet. There are a lot of employers out there taking a piss

Don't work for them then.

 

[Justin Smith]

What has that got to do with employers ripping off employees?

Employers do not "rip off employees", certainly decent employees (and why should they have to employ bad employees ? ).
That's 6th form common room stuff.
Employees choose to work in a particular job, it's their own choice.

 

[frankie007]

I don't work for them any more but when I was, there was not a lot of work around. Not everybody has choices that you might have. Catering is a very exploitative industry that takes advantage of a lot of people which I have seen over more than 30 years in the game.
You saying" well don't work for them" is over simplifying things, state of economy will only make things worse

 

[JEREMY HAWKE]

The day they stopped sending children up chimneys was the thin end of the wedge

 

[SillyBill]

U.K. seems to want to catch France up at a rate of knots in terms of size of State (fastest tax growth in the developed world) / workplace protections yet we're nowhere near as productive as the French per hour worked - this reads really terribly to me for UK growth prospects (and I mean private sector growth too, public sector growth is a given under a Labour administration). Coupled with the highest energy costs in the developed world and more and more regulation, what is the plan here? Seen nothing but my taxes go up, services get worse, and more regulation so far.