Collective bargaining and agreements

New and updated

• Podcast: Key employment cases for 2020

  Date:

  21 January 2020

  Type:

  Podcasts and webinars

  Which employment cases will have the biggest impact on HR in 2020? We assess the likely impact on employers of upcoming cases on: the national minimum wage, data protection, age discrimination, collective bargaining, and TUPE.

• Cases on appeal

  Type:

  Law reports

  Updated to reflect that the Court of Appeal will not hear the appeal in Awan v ICTS UK Ltd because the parties reached a settlement.

• Collective bargaining: Employer's direct approach to employees was lawful

  Date:

  17 June 2019

  Type:

  Law reports

  In Kostal UK Ltd v Dunkley and others, the Court of Appeal held that the employer had not made unlawful inducements when it sent letters to employees asking them to agree a pay deal that had been rejected by their trade union.

• The consequences of trade union recognition

  Type:

  Employment law manual

  Updated to include information on Kostal UK Ltd v Dunkley and others, in which the Court of Appeal considered if a pay offer made directly to the workforce was an unlawful inducement.

• Outsourcing: How the IWGB nearly overturned collective bargaining rules

  Date:

  18 April 2019

  Type:

  Legal guidance

  Last month the High Court dismissed a case which claimed outsourced workers should be able to negotiate pay and conditions for the organisations they work for. Tom Long, legal director and employment law specialist at law firm Shakespeare Martineau, looks at what impact the case could have had, had it been successful.

• Outsourced workers lose collective bargaining bid

  Date:

  28 March 2019

  Type:

  News

  The High Court has dismissed a case brought by the Independent Workers' Union of Great Britain (IWGB), which claimed that outsourced employees should be able to negotiate pay and conditions with the employers they work for.

• Pharmacists' union wins eight-year battle for Boots recognition

  Date:

  13 March 2019

  Type:

  News

  A pharmacists' union has invited Boots to "start a new positive chapter of employee relations" after winning an eight year battle for recognition at the company.

• Collective bargaining: Letters sent directly to employees sought "prohibited result" of ending collective bargaining

  Date:

  2 May 2018

  Type:

  Law reports

  In Kostal UK Ltd v Dunkley and others [2018] IRLR 428 EAT, the EAT held that the employer made unlawful inducements when it sent letters to employees asking them to agree a pay deal that had been rejected by their trade union. The employer had sought the "prohibited result" that - for the following year at least - the employees' terms would no longer be determined by collective agreement, even though the employer had no intention of actually derecognising the union.

• Direct pay offers to employees "over the heads of the union" were unlawful inducements

  Date:

  11 January 2018

  Type:

  Law reports

  In Kostal UK Ltd v Dunkley and others, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) held that an employer offered unlawful inducements when it attempted to bypass collective bargaining with a trade union by making pay offers directly to its members.

• Local authority conditions of service

  Date:

  15 November 2017

  Type:

  Legal guidance

  This article looks at the structure of nationally and locally negotiated conditions of service in local authorities.