Trade Union Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-08
Topic: Government Operations
Raymond Collins (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, this debate is on what certain "important public services" mean in terms of not just the 50% turnout but the 40% of those entitled to vote. Important public services are defined as the fire service, transport services, education for children under the age of 17, border security, and the decommissioning and management of radioactive waste. The Bill does not specify within these services who will be covered by the 40% threshold. But as the Minister has just said in response to the other grouping, the Government recently responded to their consultation on balloting thresholds and important public services In that response, and the accompanying skeleton regulations, more details are provided on the types of jobs and functions that the Government propose should be covered by this 40% threshold. In the fire service it includes firefighters, firefighter mangers, control centre staff and managers who co-ordinate the response; and in health it includes doctors, nurses and staff employed in ambulance services, A&E, intensive care and high-dependency units. The threshold will also apply to publicly funded services provided by private hospitals. In education it includes teachers in publicly funded schools that teach pupils between the ages of five and 16, and head teachers and academy principals in state-funded education teaching children between the ages of five and 16. In transport it includes, as I mentioned before, staff employed in bus services in London, including drivers and emergency and control staff, and staff employed in passenger rail services, the metro, the Underground and trams, including train drivers, conductors and guards, safety staff, maintenance staff, and signal and engineering staff. In civil air transport it includes those who work in civil air traffic control, including licensed civil air traffic controllers, airport security, port security and border security, including staff employed to implement entry and exit checks. The Government have said that they are still reviewing which functions within the nuclear decommissioning sector should be covered by the 40% threshold. It is unclear when this decision will be made and I hope that the Minister can inform the House exactly when that will be I am, of course, pleased that the Minister has put her name to Amendment 6, which removes from the scope of the 40% threshold individuals employed in ancillary activities that support important public services. This means that hundreds of thousands of private sector service workers will no longer be covered by the threshold. Of course we welcome that. However, it does not address the imprecise nature of the proposals. Before they go to a ballot, unions will not know whether the 40% threshold will apply. That will create uncertainty in industrial relations Amendment 3 is a probing amendment, intended to seek clarity from the Government about the broad category of "important public services". We suggest inserting "solely" into new subsection (2B), so that the 40% threshold would apply only to those who are, "normally engaged solely in … the provision of important public services, or", ancillary services. As the provision stands, it is unclear whether individuals who spend only part of their time providing so-called "important public services" are covered by the 40% vote requirement Take education, for example. Education unions planning to ballot staff in a school with a sixth form will find it difficult to assess whether staff who teach both pupils under 17 and those in years 12 and 13 are normally engaged in providing important public services. This will be particularly problematic where teachers’ work schedules vary during the academic year. They might do one thing in one term and something else in another. How will unions be able to work out how the 40% will apply? Similarly, it is not clear whether the 40% threshold will apply to a ballot involving lecturers in further education colleges who teach classes in which some of the pupils may be 16 The skeleton regulations say that the threshold will apply to, "care services provided by a hospital for illnesses, conditions or injuries which require immediate attention in order to prevent serious injury, serious illness or loss of life". It is far from clear whether this will cover¸ for example, medical staff working in orthopaedic wards, radiographers, anaesthetists or surgeons. It is clear that the Government have not thought this measure through closely. It demonstrates a poor understanding not just of the way trade unions operate but of public sector working patterns The proposals are inconsistent and incoherent, and vary considerably across sectors. For example, virtually all staff working in the transport sector will be covered by the 40% threshold, whereas in other sectors its scope will be far narrower. I find it difficult to see how the Government can justify restricting the right to strike for staff working in ticket offices at railway stations and on the Underground, for example, when TfL has just decided to close ticket offices because they are not considered to be essential services. That creates incoherent policy application The threshold will apply to bus drivers—but only in London. On the previous group of amendments the Minister suggested that that was because, outside London—well, actually I did not quite get her argument. Were there more buses there? From what I hear on the radio, rural areas will be depleted of any bus service. The "strike" affecting bus services in rural areas is being conducted not by the workers, who would love to keep their jobs in those services, but as a consequence of government cuts, which will deny communities the right to a bus service. An essential bus service is being denied by the actions of this Government, elected on 36% of the poll. It is that incoherent, inconsistent policy objective that we object to most.