Member

The Government are committed to strengthening collective bargaining rights and trade union recognition. There are a series of measures in the Employment Rights Bill that will do this, and we are committed to seeing these benefits through. Alongside re-establishing the school support staff negotiating body and introducing the social care negotiating bodies, the Bill’s measures include setting up a general right of access scheme for trade unions and bringing forward measures that will simplify the trade union recognition process. We expect that an additional benefit of these measures may be an increased rate of workers covered under collective agreements. However, at this moment our priorities are delivering these measures under Make Work Pay, and we are not yet looking to meet the 80% target, although we will continue to monitor the rates of trade union membership and collective agreements.