Unite wins at Ayrshire firm

The Unite general union has won recognition on behalf of 750 workers at Scottish aerospace firm GE Caledonian, despite threats from the company to halt investment plans.

More than half of the workforce (55%) at GE’s Ayrshire plant voted in favour of recognition in a ballot ordered by the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC).

The union is already recognised at the company’s other UK plants. However, the Scottish management had rejected informal recognition requests from Unite. It went so far as to threaten to withdraw multi-million pound expansion plans if the union was recognised and once the matter was taken to the CAC it insisted on a full ballot, even though more than half of the workers were already members.