In March last year the JCC accepted as policy an emergency. motion, submitted by the Metropolitan Joint Executive

Transcription

1 IAN RENNIE BALLOT SESSION In March last year the JCC accepted as policy an emergency motion, submitted by the Metropolitan Joint Executive Committee, to seek a ballot on Industrial Rights. The motion instructed the JCC: to hold a ballot of the full membership on the question Do you wish the PFEW to seek to obtain Industrial Rights. And stated that: This ballot should be held after the membership are provided with all relevant information with regards to the consequences of members of the Police Federation of England & Wales obtaining Industrial Rights, and should be held before Police Federation Annual Conference

2 In opening this session I wish to take Conference through the process followed by the JCC in accepting this as policy and bringing that motion into effect. Legal position There are laws and a statutory Code of Practice that apply to ballots carried out by trade unions. Whilst we are not a trade union, and technically do not have to conform to the legislation, it was important that if the ballot was to have any credibility with government and our members, it had to be conducted under the rules that apply to trade union ballots of this nature. It therefore had to: be conducted in secret, without interference or constraint imposed by the union be a postal ballot where members vote by marking a box on a voting paper and return it in a prepaid envelope 2

3 be supervised by a qualified independent person (a scrutineer ) be open to all members the union wants to take action and inform everyone entitled to vote how many people voted, the number of yes votes, no votes or spoiled papers as soon as it can after the ballot. ERS The JCC first sought to identify a suitable company to act as an independent scrutineer and to conduct the ballot. We ran a tendering process and on 27 June 2012 the Joint Central Committee appointed Electoral Reform Services ERS to undertake this work. ERS has widely recognised expertise in this area, providing balloting services to most local authorities, trade unions and mainstream political parties. 3

4 The Chief Executive of ERS attended the JBB Chairs and Secretaries meeting on 18 July to give a presentation on the process and the membership information that ERS would require in order to conduct a postal ballot. ERS asked JBBs to identify the level of membership information they currently held, so that they could explore the best way of ensuring ballot papers were delivered directly to each member of the PFEW. To fulfil the second part of the policy, ensuring that our members voted from an informed position, the JCC began an education process through the PFEW website starting in September last year. For reasons I will come on to the JCC delayed the start of this process until after the PNB negotiations had concluded in respect of compulsory severance. I also wrote to the Home Secretary asking her to confirm her view, expressed at conference last year, that she would not put 4

5 public safety at risk and would not support any moves to give police officers the right to take industrial action. She confirmed this was still the Government s position. PAUSE To determine whether or not the JCC should adopt a position in respect of advising members to vote in a particular way, an extraordinary JCC meeting was arranged for 23 October. This was to allow JCC members the opportunity to speak with and obtain the views of those they represent. At that meeting the JCC adopted a neutral position and, although many of us had clear views on the issue including myself, the JCC did not advocate either a yes or a no vote, leaving it to members to decide after due consideration of the facts. Also at that meeting, the JCC agreed a proposal by the CCC, that any mandate to pursue the right to take industrial action 5

6 would have to be based on a positive vote of the majority of the membership of the Federated Ranks of England and Wales. The JCC considered that a change to our terms and conditions of such significance had to be made by a majority of members and that to seek changes passed by a minority would have left us open to challenge by members as well as by the government. Between the beginning of November and the end of December a series of s was circulated to all JBBs with information to pass on to members, including links to the then Chair-Elect's piece to camera and an information booklet on the right to take industrial action. These communications provided all of the relevant information, as stipulated in the original motion. This included addressing exactly what the term industrial action means. 6

7 Definition of industrial rights In the last few years the phrase "industrial rights" has been used by members of the Police Federation as shorthand for the "right to take industrial action". But there are in fact no specific industrial rights set out in law. When workers take industrial action, this is usually a breach of their contract of employment. In actual fact, it is unlawful to induce people to break such a contract, which is what a trade union does when it organises industrial action. However, as long as trade unions comply with strict requirements, in particular in relation to balloting their members, the law allows them to organise industrial action without fear of being challenged in the courts. Provided that it has been endorsed and organised lawfully by a trade union, it is usually unfair to dismiss workers who take part in industrial action. 7

8 As you know, it is against the law for police officers to join a trade union or to cause disaffection among police officers. This makes it illegal for police officers to effectively take industrial action or to withdraw their labour and go on strike. This is a hugely significant difference between police officers and other workers. For these reasons, the actual question put to members was: Should the Police Federation of England and Wales seek to obtain the right for police officers to take industrial action? I am grateful for your active support in engaging with members and disseminating information so that they had the opportunity to make their decision from an informed position. 8

9 Despite the best intentions of the JCC in seeking to hold an allmember postal ballot, at the JBB Secretaries meeting on 26 November it became apparent that the information required to undertake such a ballot was simply not available. A number of JBBs raised concerns about the willingness of their forces to allow them to share members' contact details with ERS and the PFEW nationally. Following advice from ERS, on 28 November 2012 the JCC agreed to conduct the ballot through the use of the PNN system. Although this was not a postal ballot in strict accordance with trade union law, this was the best possible alternative in the circumstances. Given that ERS was not in a position to contact officers directly, this solution required members to register in a secure website, which removed any issues in respect of data protection but still 9

10 provided a robust system should the process be called into scrutiny. It was agreed that where JBBs were in a position to provide lists of officers with the verification data sought by ERS, then ERS would confirm that those who registered on the website were entitled to participate in the ballot. However, some forces refused to allow their JBBs to share that information with ERS. In such instances, on a daily basis ERS had to provide those JBBs with a list of the warrant numbers and PNN addresses for those who had registered, and ask the JBB to verify those details. At the same time as arrangements for the ballot were being made, Staff Side was also engaged in proceedings at the Police Arbitration Tribunal on a number of issues, including the hugely significant matter of compulsory severance. 10

11 Many JCC members had received feedback that the issue of compulsory severance was likely to be a deciding factor in members voting for industrial rights. The PAT decision came out on 6 December As it turned out, the PAT declined to make a decision on compulsory severance and gave the PNB until July 2013 for further negotiations to take place. This meant that the issue of compulsory severance would remain unresolved while the ballot was being conducted. At a further extraordinary meeting on 12 December 2012 the JCC discussed the implications of the timing of the ballot. It was not possible to defer the ballot, given the timings set down within the original motion requiring a ballot before this conference, so the JCC agreed to add a third option to the question on the ballot paper. 11

12 Rather than a simple "yes" or "no" vote, the third option allowed members to vote Yes if compulsory severance was introduced. The JCC, at that time, considered this could provide Staff Side with a stronger position during the PNB negotiations. Following this meeting, the problem of getting access to officers in a confidential but verifiable way again reared its head. There remained a small number of chief constables who expressed a reluctance to allow the use of PNN addresses to facilitate the ballot. On 20 December I requested all JBBs to confirm the position in respect of their force and whether, if PNN access was not available, they were able to facilitate the ballot through the alternative means proposed by ERS. At the Joint Consultative Meeting held on 8 January 2013 I raised this issue with Sir Hugh Orde, who ensured that the 12

13 issue was debated at ACPO Cabinet, where it was agreed that use of the PNN was permissible for the ballot. However, it was left to the discretion of individual chief constables as to whether they would allow JBBs to access the system for this purpose. I was extremely grateful to JBB officials for their efforts within their forces to ensure that force IT systems enabled the necessary processes for the ballot to proceed. It appeared that in the final analysis the vast majority of forces did allow access to the PNN system to conduct the ballot. Certainly we know that officers in every force were able to vote. By mid-january it was apparent that registrations for the ballot were not as high as had been initially anticipated. On 24 January 2013 the JCC considered correspondence from the Metropolitan Joint Executive Committee that included the issues of: 13

14 whether to continue with the ballot in light of the low take up of registrations, whether to retain the supplementary question regarding compulsory severance and to reconsider the policy in respect of the threshold required to achieve a mandate in the ballot. The JCC was informed that only 37,000 officers had registered. This equated to 26 percent of all members of the Federated Ranks. Following a lengthy discussion the JCC resolved that the ballot should continue and every effort should be made to encourage members to register and to vote. Following concerted action by the Communications Department at Leatherhead, but particularly thanks to the hard work of JBBs, the registration level increased to more than 68,000 officers over half of the Federated Ranks. 14

15 Following the strong representations made by Metropolitan colleagues that the ballot should have no caveat and only allow a simple Yes or No voting option in line with their original motion, the JCC agreed to remove the third option which would have allowed individuals to vote Yes if compulsory severance was introduced. The JCC in revisiting its policy in respect of the percentage of votes required to achieve a mandate in the ballot maintained the view that a change of such significance to our terms and conditions of service had to be made by a majority of the members. It was decided that the membership majority of 50 percent plus one for a "yes" vote should be retained as to seek a such a change supported by a minority of the membership would have left us open to challenge from both inside and outside the organisation. 15

16 This was a ballot of all members both subscribing and nonsubscribing. We therefore had to rely on Home Office figures for all Federated Ranks. This produced a threshold of 66,555. Registration for the ballot opened on 1 January 2013 and closed on 26 February. Voting opened on 31 January and closed on 28 February. The total number of officers who voted in the ballot was 56,332. This was 42 percent of those eligible to vote. Of those who did vote, 45,651 officers or 81 percent voted in favour of seeking the right to take industrial action. This equates to one-third of our membership. This was truly astonishing, and the ballot result showed just how strongly very many of our members feel about the way they have been treated by this government. 16

17 While those of our members may be disappointed by the outcome of the ballot, we must not lose sight of the fact that over half 58 percent of our members did not vote. It is not possible to establish whether this is because they were disinclined to vote or were not bothered by the outcome. The PFEW is made up of many members and we need to include them all in our analysis of the ballot result. We will have differences of opinion, but we need to be sure that we are an inclusive organisation that is relevant to all of our members that they know about what we do and are engaged with the issues that affect them. This is the other important lesson that we must take from the ballot. That is why we gave members the option to be contacted in the future by the PFEW nationally and the main reason why the JCC has adopted as policy the development of a national membership database. 17

18 For many years people have demanded that we put the question of industrial rights to the membership. Well, now we have and the majority have remained silent. Many of those who have voted yes in the ballot feel strongly and hold a legitimate point of view. We must find ways of reflecting that view in our work going forward. And, of course, should the government change the unique employment status of police officers we may again need to consider all options. But in the meantime we have to remain relevant to all of our members and we have to represent those individuals who feel strongly on this issue alongside the silent majority of police officers in England and Wales. 18

19 Let me end by thanking the members of the JCC and all those JBB officials who helped to ensure the successful delivery of this ballot. It was a team effort and I am grateful or your support. Thank You 19