Strike at Asda averted following deal on staff representation

A planned five-day strike by warehouse staff at the Asda supermarket chain in the UK, due to begin on 30 June 2006, was called off after management and the GMB general trade union reached agreement on staff representation and bargaining arrangements.

Asda is one of the UK’s largest supermarket chains, with some 140,000 employees. It has been owned since 1999 by the US-based Wal-Mart group – a company that seeks to avoid dealing with trade unions in its home-country operations – and in recent years has been beset by industrial relations problems. These have included a number of disputes over union recognition and collective bargaining rights, especially in Asda’s distribution warehouses. Most notably, in February 2006, an employment tribunal found that the company had breached the law by offering financial incentives to employees at a site to give up their rights to collective bargaining (UK0604059I).

The current representation and bargaining situation at Asda is that the GMB general trade union claims to have 25,000 members among the workforce and is the only union with recognition in the group’s stores and distribution depots in England, Scotland and Wales (although the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, USDAW, has some recognition rights in Northern Ireland). Moreover, the GMB has collective bargaining rights in nine of Asda’s 20 depots. At other depots, the union has members but it is not recognised by the company for bargaining purposes. In Asda’s stores, the GMB states that it is the ‘recognised union’ even though collective bargaining rights were withdrawn by the company in the 1990s.

Strike called

In June 2006, the GMB held a ballot among its members at all 20 Asda distribution depots on whether or not to take strike action and/or industrial action short of a strike in support of outstanding claims with the company. These demands relate to the establishment of national bargaining structures between the company and the GMB covering pay, employment conditions and union facilities at all distribution sites, along with substantive issues concerning alleged unpaid bonuses and the unilateral introduction of new technology by management.

In the ballot, union members voted by three to one (2,209 votes to 771) in favour of strike action and by more than four to one (2,483 votes to 487) for action short of a strike. The GMB stated that 57% of its 5,347 members at Asda depots voted in the ballot. On the basis of this result, on 22 June 2006, the union called a five-day strike from 30 June until 4 July by all the GMB members in Asda depots, to be followed by a ‘further comprehensive programme of industrial action’.

Asda management stated that only a third of the 13,900 depot staff are union members, and that only a sixth of all depot workers had voted for strike action. The management also claimed that there had been ‘irregularities’ in the ballot and threatened to seek a court injunction to prevent the action. The GMB expressed concern about what it alleged were preparations to use temporary agency workers to cover the work of striking employees, in contravention of the law.

Agreement reached

Negotiations between the GMB and Asda management, facilitated by the Trades Union Congress (TUC), led to an agreement on staff representation and bargaining arrangements at the distribution depots. Asda shop stewards accepted the agreement at a meeting on 29 June and called off the planned strike.

The agreement creates a joint union–management council to cover all Asda distribution depots, and provides for the ‘modernisation’ of existing collective agreements at nine sites as well as the potential extension of bargaining to further sites. The main points of the agreement are as follows:

• a new distribution national joint council (NJC) will be established to deal with a range of issues of mutual concern in relation to Asda distribution depots. These include health and safety, human resources (HR) policies, training and development, shop steward facilities, dispute resolution mechanisms, new technology, environmental issues, equal opportunities and diversity;

• the company and the union will meet ‘at the most senior level’ at least twice a year to review major strategic issues facing Asda;

• local-level negotiations will take place on the modernisation of existing collective agreements in nine depots, with the NJC ‘exercising an overview’;

• the GMB will be given access to all Asda distribution sites, with facilities for ‘appropriate levels’ of union workplace representatives, plus facilities to distribute union literature, recruit personnel, present the union case during company induction procedures, and run union election procedures for workplace representatives and the new NJC etc;

• the NJC will negotiate as a first priority, within three months, a model collective agreement for two sites (Chepstow and Erith) and potentially for other sites. Implementation of this agreement at each of the two initial sites will require support from 50% or more of those voting in a ballot of all employees in the agreed bargaining unit at each site. After the first ballot, the company and the union will meet at the most senior level to evaluate the process, including voting turn-out and the conduct of each party. This evaluation will inform discussions on how the collective bargaining process will be handled in respect of other sites.

The company states in the agreement that it has ‘no principled objection to collective bargaining provided this is subject to the free and informed choice of employees’. Asda will remain neutral and continue to ‘communicate with colleagues in the normal way’ and both parties have made a commitment that any ballots held under the new procedures will be conducted in a non-adversarial manner. In the event of any ‘misrepresentations of fact’, either party has the right to raise and correct these issues with the other party. Both parties ‘commit themselves to working together to rebuild relations, restore trust, and conduct relations in a non-adversarial way’.

Reactions

The GMB General Secretary, Paul Kenny, welcomed the agreement: ‘This new agreement which the GMB and Asda Wal-Mart have worked very hard to achieve heralds a new fresh approach to representation and bargaining between the company and the GMB. It is the clear intention of this new agreement that issues beneficial to the growth of the company and the economic benefit of its employees will be dealt with through the new national joint council.’ Asda’s Chief Operating Officer, David Cheesewright, stated: ‘We’re pleased to have signed an agreement acceptable to both sides to end the current dispute.’

Mark Carley, SPIRE Associates/IRRU