Unions cautious on statutory recognition

Further evidence that unions have been very cautious in using the statutory recognition procedure came in the annual report of the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC) published last month. The CAC is the statutory body which operates the system.

CAC chief executive Callum Johnston said in the report that unions "seem generally to have avoided bringing cases in which they were not highly confident of both their level of membership and the degree of support for recognition in the proposed bargaining unit".

Out of 57 recognition applications made by unions in the period up to the end of March, 27 were accepted at the first stage, in which unions have to demonstrate a threshold of support among the workforce, and only three were rejected. The rest were either still to be decided or had been withdrawn.

Over half of the applications were in respect of bargaining units with under 100 staff. Unions have criticised the legislation for making statutory recognition difficult to achieve for large groups of workers spread across different sites.

The majority of applications were from the manufacturing, transport/distribution and printing sectors.

The CAC said that its caseload had started slowly in the first few months after the legislation came in but that since then it had picked up significantly.