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Macmillan chapel demands the gen on pay and maternity stats

The joint NUJ/Unite chapel at Macmillan is stepping up a gear in its bid to get the company to disclose information it needs to be able to negotiate effectively.

The joint NUJ/Unite chapel at Macmillan is stepping up a gear in its bid to get the company to disclose information it needs to be able to negotiate effectively.
It has asked the NUJ legal beagle, Roy Mincoff, to put together a claim to the CAC, which has the power to act where an employer who recognises a trade union for collective bargaining purposes “fails to disclose to trade union representatives such information in his possession as is necessary to ensure they are not impeded in carrying on collective bargaining with him…”
Committee member Adele Moss says the joint chapel has been asking repeatedly for the salary brackets for job titles (i.e. what the highest and lowest salary is for each job title or ‘equivalent jobs’, as categorised by the company), and statistics for long-term return rates and retention following maternity leave. “As well as verbal requests at our quarterly meetings, we have put these requests in writing twice, drawing James Richardson’s [the HR director’s] attention to Section 181 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, and also to the ACAS Code of Practice 2: ‘Disclosure of Information to Trade Unions for Collective Bargaining Purposes’.”
Whether Richardson would be likely to take any more notice of a CAC ruling on this issue than he did to previous CAC rulings regarding Macmillan’s obligation to set up a statutory information and consultation procedure is something we shall never know. After his bizarre ‘ignore-them-and-they-may-go-away’ tactics landed the company with a £55,000 fine last summer, Richardson was moved from HR, and relations between management and the joint chapel have been markedly more constructive ever since.
A new head of HR is now in place, and the chapel are optimistic that they will be able to reach an early agreement on getting access to the information they need. If not, it’s back to the CAC.