The number of cases between businesses and unions being handled by a specialist industrial court here over areas such as pay disputes has “doubled if not tripled” here in the last couple of years.
That’s according to Sarah Havlin, who is now chair of the Industrial Court here.
And it’s now dealing with more cases from major tech firms, which have a base here but are headquartered elsewhere, as well as dealing with those in senior and higher-paying roles.
“I’d say we have probably doubled, if not tripled [the number of cases] – certainly in the last 18 months,” she tells Ulster Business.
“I think that’s because the general climate is intense and the scope for negotiation is difficult. There have been a lot of hard decisions taken by employers.”
Its main function is to adjudicate on applications relating to statutory recognition and derecognition of trade unions for collective bargaining purposes, where such recognition or derecognition cannot be agreed voluntarily.
It’s a highly specialist tribunal which deals with areas such as pay and hours disputes between trade unions and businesses.
Sarah is in a five-year post with the Industrial Court – which is a tribunal body with statutory powers.
It was originally set up in 1919 to provide arbitration in industrial disputes and it still carries out this voluntary arbitration role.
“It’s a niche area as it’s a narrow remit which we deal with. It’s collective bargaining and the area of pay bargaining,” Sarah says.
“We only get involved when that cannot be achieved by agreement. Usually unions and employers are strong on agreement, but if they can’t we offer the statutory route. We deal with contested applications where unions are seeking recognition.”
The court deals with contested recognition, whereby if a group of workers want a union to represent them, the employer may not agree that the union has significant presence or representation among its workforce.
“We will put it through stages to look at level of support on the of workers. If it meets the statutory test then it can get recognition from Industrial Court
Some cases recently include a decision by the Industrial Court earlier this year, when it ordered a ballot on recognition of Unite at Seagate in Derry. This resulted in the court declaring recognition of Unite to bargain on behalf of all manufacturing specialists at the plant.
“[Speaking generally] often when we are involved in a contentious application for recognition, there may be lots of other things going on in the business, such as redundancy.
“Those other conditions and situations might be feeding into how the workers are feeling and why the strength of the union is growing.
“It can be a complicated process.
“An employer might say that the conditions for recognising the union are not appropriate and that the statutory criteria cannot be met because it’s an unrealistic picture of the workplace.
“Our job in terms of determining the support for a union is very much based on a fixed point in time. We are checking the level of support.”
She says the primary test for the acceptance of an application is that the union has at least 10% membership within the bargaining group which they are seeking recognition for.
A second is whether a majority of the bargaining unit would favour recognition of the union, but may not be members.
“Quite a lot of employers do want to test very strongly whether the union has the support of the workers for recognition,” she says.
But Sarah says cases can also be brought by unions “prematurely” whereby they haven’t properly understood or assessed the level of support.
“It’s important that employers are given that opportunity to test the union’s application and assertion that they enjoy support.
“The difficult thing for employers is they have no way of knowing who in the bargaining unit is a member of a trade union, because it’s confidential information.”
UK-wide, Sarah says there are lot of recent cases from tech firms which have operations here which “are not minded to agree to recognise a union”.
“Some companies may have a culture which is about direct engagement with employees and not wanting to recognise or get involved with trade unions on pay bargaining.
“That said, there are a lot of employers out there who are very successful and wealthy, who do engage really proactively with trade unions – they see them as a partner and a useful presence in the workforce.
“Trade unions are good at selling difficult messages to the workforce and when workers feel their union is content and has probed all of the information provided by the employer, they are perhaps more inclined to accept a union recommendation around pay.
“A lot of employers do recognise that and work in partnership with trade unions”.
Looking at other trends, she says there are an increased number of higher paid and more senior workers focusing on trade union representation.
That includes a recent case involving a financial organisation and its senior staff.
“Higher paid workers and tech workers seem to be focusing quite a lot on having that trade union representative voice,” she says.
“On a UK-wide level, the CAC has seen something like a 100% increase and I think it’s similar here. Not every case will go the full way. There will be contentious cases we receive when they go into conciliation, as we work closely with the Labour Relations Agency (LRA).
“I would often refer cases to the LRA where I can see there is room for more discussion. I do like to empower the parties as much as possible to arrive at an agreed recognition agreement.
“I think the unions realise that there are more workers who are keen to have trade union membership. But of course, there are lots of workplaces out there where staff are union members but the union isn’t recognised. The union will build on that and start a recognition campaign.
“… it’s quite difficult to do that if they aren’t in the workplace. They have to do that outside the workplace – that takes a lot of work and organisation and time to build that support.”