Virgin Media has won its battle to derecognise two unions within its operations. In a ballot conducted over a two week period, workers voted to derecognise the two sole recognised unions, the CWU communications union and the BECTU media union. The vote to give the company the legitimate go ahead to derecognise the union was 52% for and 48% against on a turnout of 80%. Appeal to this procedure by employer is rare, and its success is even rarer. By Gregor Gall, Research Professor of Industrial Relations and Director of the Work and Employment Research Unit (WERU), University of Hertfordshire. (Ref. 120691)
The question posed was ‘Do you agree with Virgin Media’s proposal to end the current collective bargaining agreement with our Trade Unions (CWU and BECTU)?’ This looks like a reasonable mandate to banish the unions from its operations and allow the in-house company ‘Voice Forum’ to be the sole means of employee representation. However, the mandate is rather less solid given that the ballot was announced with notice, conducted in a short space of time and allowed not only non-union members...
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