Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
Debate between Edward Leigh and Frank Doran(10 years, 7 months ago)
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The Temporary Chair (Sir Edward Leigh)
Order. Members cannot just make something up and say that it should be in the clause; they must relate the debate to what is in the clause already. The hon. Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke), who has been here quite long enough, should learn how to behave properly.
Mr Doran
I hope that I took it in good part, Sir Edward.
The decision on the legislation that was to proceed was taken under the process I have mentioned, and everything agreed between the CBI and the TUC was implemented. At its heart was the need to take the heat out of industrial action. We looked at a whole range of areas. One key area was the problem of recognition disputes, when unions had built up a membership in a company and wanted recognition. Many such disputes ended up in the courts and in difficult strikes. We wanted to take the heat out of all areas of conflict. All of that was implemented in the Employment Relations Act 1999. The evidence was a dramatic reduction in the number of strikes—my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South mentioned the number, but I cannot remember—and that has been maintained. I do not think that there is any question about that.
During the Conservative years, and the previous Labour years, to be honest, the level of strikes was far too high. That legislation and that process brought that to an end, and at the time both sides were happy. Even before that legislation was implemented to set in place a process for dealing with recognition disputes, and the effort was to take them out of the courts and minimise conflict, over 1,000 new recognition agreements were signed by both sides.
One of the major problems with this Government is that they have a one-sided approach that demonises trade unions and in every way possible places barriers in the way of the trade union movement. There is no realisation of what happens on the ground. Most trade unions are there not to strike or disrupt the employer, but to protect their members. As part of the process I mentioned, we did a lot of balloting and held focus groups to find out why members signed up to unions. The important thing for most of them was the insurance policy that they got—the fact that the union would support them if there was an argument with their employer, and in particular would pay for the lawyers in an unfair dismissal case, for example. That is what members bought into.
One of my concerns about the Government’s approach is that the harder it becomes for trade unions to operate properly, as trade unions should be allowed to operate in a democratic system, the more members will become tired of the system and have no proper recourse for their grievances. I do not often agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on these issues—
The Temporary Chairman (Sir Edward Leigh)
Order. The hon. Gentleman should leave the subject of Sellafield and come back to clause 36, please. The discussion is getting very wide.
Mr Doran
Two hundred trade unionists turned up to lobby us at the meeting we attended. The point I was trying to make, Mr Leigh, was about the relationship between a good union and a good employer.
My hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) raised union problems. There are two ways of looking at the matter. Either the Government do not know what the problems are, in which case they are negligent, or they know the problems and want them to be exploited. There are major difficulties in the path of any trade union that wants to keep proper records.
The first difficulty is the churn rate. My hon. Friend said that it was 10% or 15%, but the churn rate for the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, for example, is 25% or sometimes 30%. Every year it has to replace 25% of its membership. A lot of members go on to other jobs. They pay their union dues by direct debit and think they do not need to bother to tell the union that they have changed workplace, because they are still working in the same business and paying their union dues. That is difficult for unions. There are lots of practical issues such as that.
The biggest employer in my area is the North sea oil and gas industry, which employs about 30,000 workers offshore and 150,000 onshore. All have different status in the workplace. Many union members are self-employed and many work from company to company. At the moment, there is a massive skill shortage in the North sea. Wages are being ramped up—not a problem in the rest of the country, I know—because people are being enticed to other companies, but still working in the same business, travelling on the same unsafe helicopters and paying their union dues as usual through their bank accounts. Those are all massive problems.