28 August 2014

Bromley council has been ordered to pay over £64,000 in compensation after offering employees cash incentives to give up employment rights.

The employees were offered a wage rise and a one-off payment to sign new contracts which would have taken them out of their existing collective bargaining agreements. The new contracts would have enabled pay to be set by the council, rather than by national or regional agreements, negotiated by unions. The case was taken to tribunal by 18 UNISON members.

Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison said of the victory, “The decision is a significant victory for our members at Bromley Council who were effectively coerced into signing away their employment rights. It should send a strong signal to other local authorities that they cannot simply withdraw from collective bargaining by going behind the union’s back and making these types of offers.”

The case echoes that of Dave Wilson, an NUJ member, who had similarly been offered a 4.5% pay increase to sign a new contract and accept de-recognition of the union in 1989. Wilson and the NUJ appealed to domestic courts, contesting the legality of the attempt to evade collective bargaining. While the case was successful in the Court of Appeal, the Conservative government immediately moved to change the law to overturn the decision, through the “Ullswater amendment”.

Represented by John Hendy QC, Wilson and the NUJ then took the case to the European Court of Human Rights. In 2002 The ECHR found that the law was in breach of Article 11 of the convention – the right to association – after a 12-year legal battle. Article 11 states “Everyone has the right to join trade unions for the protection of his interests”.

The EHCR said “If workers are prevented from so doing, their freedom to belong to a trade union, for the protection of their interests, becomes illusory. It is the role of the State to ensure that trade union members are not prevented or restrained from using their union to represent them in attempts to regulate their relations with their employers.”

The court ruled that using financial incentives to encourage employees to relinquish certain trade union freedoms was a infringement on that right. The UK government had therefore failed to ensure trade union members were not restrained from using their trade union to represent them in negotiations with the employer, and the law was amended.