Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, for tabling Amendment 257A. I am happy to explain to the noble Baroness that this amendment is not appropriate. As the noble Baroness knows, trade unions are already required by existing legislation to ballot their members before commencing any industrial action. Union executives are therefore required to obtain a mandate from their members to negotiate with their employer on their behalf before industrial action can commence. We believe that union executives, as representatives of their members, are best placed to judge whether an offer is acceptable and in the best interests of the union members before deciding whether to ballot their members. Balloting members is a considerable financial and administrative challenge and repeated ballots could cause an unnecessary burden—as well as confusing members as to what was being proposed and the likelihood of a higher offer. Amendment 257A would also remove the power of union executives to negotiate on behalf of their members for a deal that they consider will deliver before balloting members on an offer. This is one of the main reasons that members join a union: they delegate to those negotiators to get the best deal for them. The negotiators will have done a great deal of detailed research on economic indicators, what is happening in their market, on the knowledge of the financial stability of the business, and so on. They will take a very wide range of factors into account into that bargaining process. This is why, quite often, negotiations take time, because all those factors have to be discussed in some detail in a way that an individual member would not be able to do. Furthermore, the amendment has no safeguards to prevent gaming. Were we to accept it, there are risks that employers could submit multiple derisory offers to unions in order to interfere with the industrial action ballot mandate by forcing the union to constantly re-ballot members on derisory offers at the cost of the union. As the noble Baroness said, balloting on small increases would be ridiculous, but this is exactly what her amendment would require. We consider, therefore, that existing legislation is effective. As union representatives are elected by their members to represent them, union executives should have the discretion as to whether they put an offer by an employer to their membership. If a union executive believes an offer is acceptable, they should be free to put that offer to their membership and make that judgment at the time. We think the noble Baroness’s amendment is unnecessary; the current system works well, and it brings great benefits to individual members. I therefore ask the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, to withdraw her amendment.