Clause 17 - Information about employees to be ballotedon industrial action
Employment Relations Bill
9:30 am
Mr Gerry Sutcliffe (Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Employment Relations, Competition and Consumers), Department of Trade and Industry; Bradford South, Labour)
Good morning, Mr. Stevenson, and welcome to the Committee.
The hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) asked what the Government's intention is. I shall deal with both amendments as they would make the same change to clauses 17 and 20. Both clauses deal with the law on industrial action notices. Clause 17 concerns the notices that unions must provide in advance of industrial action ballots, and clause 20 deals with notices that unions must provide in advance of any subsequent industrial action.
The present law is far too complicated. It places unrealistically high demands on unions, and opens the way for legal action over relatively minor breaches of the law. Clauses 17 and 20 therefore make several important simplifications. For example, we have made it clear in our provisions that the union need supply only that information that is in the possession of, or accessible to, union employees or union officers. That formulation ensures that unions are under no obligation to assemble and present information held by their lay officials around the country—the point raised by the hon. Gentleman.
The requirement is therefore confined to what the union can realistically be expected to assemble—namely, information held by, or accessible to, the main officers and staff of the union. For a larger union, the definition would cover the information held at head offices or at any of its regional or district offices from which its full-time officers operate. That will often be a large network.
Amendments Nos. 8 and 9 seek to widen considerably the information that is to be regarded as being in the possession of the union. The hon. Member for North-West Norfolk proposes extending the definition to include information held by every union branch and section. He seeks to ensure that information held by shop stewards or branch officials up and down the country must be used by the union when preparing the notices if it is relevant. For large unions, we would be talking about thousands of individuals and locations.
I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has ever been an active trade union member. Perhaps he has been—after all, lawyers have one of the best trade unions. [Hon. Members: ''A closed shop.''] Yes, it is a closed shop. However, I am not sure whether he has ever been an active trade union member. If he had been, he would understand the severe limitations on most part-time secretaries and similar lay officials.
Volunteers who work in union branches and sections rarely have much, if any, office equipment. They work part-time, spending a few hours a week on union business. Their rights to paid time off to conduct that business may be limited, especially if the union is unrecognised. Not surprisingly, their ability to maintain accurate and up-to-date records is limited, as is their ability to communicate that information to a full-time official in a usable form.
That is not to condone inefficiency or sloppy working in unions, and I am sure that we shall return to that point in later discussions. Our approach is based on the reality of life in voluntary organisations. The obligations on unions should be
framed accordingly, rather than on the basis of the circumstances in which employers operate. That is why the scope of the duty on employers in clause 3 to disclose information is different.
I propose that notices should be based on information with which the union can realistically be expected to provide the employer. The definition of ''qualifying information'' is still wide and includes all the main data held by unions. The requirements will ensure that the employer's essential needs are met without placing an unnecessary burden on the unions. I therefore ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.