The UK government is contemplating giving workers a longer timeframe to strike. According to current legislation, if workers vote to take industrial action, the mandate expires after six months and unions need to conduct another ballot to extend it. However, a consultation paper released by the government stated that the mandate could be extended to a year. The paper outlined that as unions are “very likely” to win a second ballot, retaining the six-month rule would “add administrative costs” to them.
Recent years have witnessed walkouts by railway personnel, train drivers, doctors and teachers, resulting in over 5.7 million working days lost, according to official records. The government maintains that making it easier for unions to organise would result in a more co-operative relationship with employers and reduce the need for industrial action. The government is also proposing to remove the requirement that half of a workforce should vote. Furthermore, the rule that for “important public services,” such as the NHS, at least 40% of the workforce must have voted in favour of industrial action for it to proceed is expected to be abolished.
The Employment Rights Bill is a significant overhaul of workers’ rights, but the practical aspects of some of the reforms proposed are still being worked out. The bill plans to make it easier for unions to be recognised by employers and companies, allowing them to represent workers in negotiations over pay and working conditions. Currently, the application for recognition requires 10% of the members to be unionised, but it has been proposed that this threshold should be lowered to 2%. It has also been suggested that the threshold of 40% of the workforce voting in favour of recognition should be abolished.
Trade unions have raised concerns that it is too easy for companies to employ additional personnel, making it more challenging for them to achieve the required thresholds for recognition. In July, the GMB trade union lost a recognition vote at the Amazon Fulfilment Centre in Coventry by 28 votes. The union accused the company of hiring surplus employees to hinder its bid for recognition, but Amazon denied the allegations and stated that it recruited the workers as part of normal business planning.
Conservative Shadow Business Secretary Kevin Hollinrake has urged the government to withdraw the Employment Rights Bill and reconsider its position. He claims that the proposed legislation created “an existential crisis of a magnitude not seen since the pandemic” for jobs and business people. The government’s own study, released earlier in the week, found that Labour’s plans to enhance workers’ rights would cost companies up to £5 billion per year to implement
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