Trade Union Bill — House of Lords, 2016-02-23
Topic: Labor
Dianne Hayter (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, in moving Amendment 76, which also stands in the names of my noble friends Lord Mendelsohn and Lord Collins, I will speak to the other amendments in this group, and will especially oppose that Clause 12 stand part of the Bill. We see no need at all for this provision Clauses 12 and 13 are some of the most pernicious in this rather nasty little Bill. Why? They undermine good industrial relations—we are talking about facility time. They give enormous and unnecessary powers to Ministers over areas that are none of their business; they were introduced without proper consultation—just a rather hurried, minor one over the summer, in contradiction to Cabinet Office guidelines on consultation; they are not based on any evidence; they have not been demanded by public sector employers; oh—and they were not in the Conservative manifesto Clause 12 would require public sector—very widely defined—employers to log, detail and publish how much time union reps spend on facility time. This is time which allows union, safety and learning reps to do their job, to speak for or advise the workforce and to contribute to healthy industrial relations. Worse is that Clause 13 gives a Minister, not managers, a wide-ranging power—indeed, a blank cheque—to cap such rights to facility time to an arbitrary and undisclosed amount for an unspecified group of employees. That is why I want to make some general points about both clauses, as they explain both these amendments and those in subsequent groups The main issue is that the question of how to decide and document facility time is one for management, not for Ministers. Managers know the geographical spread of their workforce, the current issues, the challenges and the types of problems on which they need to work with workforce reps, and virtually every manager knows that their own staff negotiate far better than full-time officials. These lay reps are of and from the shop floor. They understand the business and, importantly, they will be there during the implementation of any agreement, to iron out any creases and to ensure that any deal sticks. As the Royal College of Nursing says on what lies behind our objection to Clauses 12 and 13, "The RCN’s lay members take time and effort to advise and represent their colleagues, while the union itself invests in these reps to bring skill, knowledge and experience to the workplace, facilitating effective partnership working" This is a cost-effective way of managing any organisation. Such input towards good relations is as true for small unions, such as the FDA; with just 20,000 members, it has only 30 employees, meaning that most work is undertaken by lay officials. Similarly, for the podiatrists, who have fewer than 10,000 members, facility time is vital, as that organisation is too small to have many union officials, so it is heavily reliant on learning, equality, safety and union representatives. It is a professional body committed to improving standards, which is what its members’ facility time is all about I therefore ask the Minister, where on earth is the evidence that we need Clause 12 to report on time spent on representation, safety or learning? Research at City University London shows that facilities for union reps in the public sector are very similar to those in the private sector, and from neither have we heard, nor have the Government demonstrated, calls for change. Indeed, evidence points the other way, with facility time being beneficial to the safety of work environments, staff welfare and, consequently, particularly in the case of the health service, patients. For that reason, the RCN has warned that Clauses 12 and 13 may have unintended consequences for patient safety. The benefits of facility time are well known to anyone with an ounce of management experience, which I would have assumed included the Minister. Therefore, Amendment 78 would require these benefits also to be documented.