End the ballot threshold and allow e-balloting, unions tell new PM
PCS backs calls for Andy Burnham, the new prime minister, to introduce electronic balloting and end the 50% ballot threshold.
On behalf of the Trade Union Co-ordinating Group – a campaigning coalition of national unions, including PCS – the general secretary of NASUWT (the Teachers' Union) wrote to Andy Burnham this week to ask him to follow through on the Labour party’s manifesto commitment to fully repeal the most recent anti-union legislation and introduce positive reforms like electronic balloting.
Ever since the employment rights bill came to parliament, PCS has campaigned alongside sister unions to pressure the government to strengthen its provisions, believing that some reforms don't go far enough in shifting industrial power towards workers.
Over the past year, PCS and other unions have sounded the warning about the government’s watering down of the employment rights bill and the delayed implementation of many of the eventual act’s (ERA) key reforms, not least the removal of the ballot threshold.
"Although we welcome many of the Employment Rights Act reforms, it is clear that it does not go far enough, particularly on sectoral collective bargaining and abolishing all anti-trade union laws," said PCS General Secretary Fran Heathcote. “With a new prime minister and new cabinet, we must ensure that, as a collective, unions are demanding this legislation goes further and our rights fully restored.”
Unions continue to warn Burnham that his administration must prioritise a roll-out of e-balloting and a removal of the 50% ballot threshold to ensure that “trade union law and regulation is fit-for-purpose in the 21st Century."
As Matt Wrack points out in the letter to the new prime minister, which has been co-signed by Fran along with other general secretaries, it is clear that this commitment included ending the anti-union ballot threshold, brought in by the 2016 Trade Union Act.
Unions like PCS are concerned, he wrote, “at the fact that the government has now sought to delay the repeal of the 50% threshold through the introduction of an explanatory note that seeks to tie this to the monitoring and review of the introduction of electronic and other forms of balloting for trade unions.”
Wrack also told the prime minister that any failure to repeal the threshold may place the Labour government in violation of the International Labour Organisation Convention 87 and the European Convention on Human Rights (Articles 11 and 14).
Sectoral collective bargaining
Just as PCS will campaign around these much-needed changes, it will continue pushing for reform of the current fragmented system of pay bargaining.
The ERA introduced sectoral collective bargaining for school support staff and social care workers, creating negotiating bodies that will determine pay and other terms and conditions. However, it does not afford the same opportunity to civil servants and workers in related areas.
Under the current "delegated" pay framework, individual departments are responsible for negotiating annual awards with recognised trade unions, guided by the government-wide annual pay remit, which is set by the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury.
As things stand, we currently have a ludicrous and inefficient situation where over 200 separate pay negotiations take place each year.