Union ‘not being given time to help members’

Union ‘not being given time to help members’

Brendan Carolan, president of the National Education Union, said that last year his union received no ‘facility time’ at all and he believes it may be due to the hard-line stance they took with the States Employment Board during their recent pay dispute. Facility time is when a union representative takes time off from their normal job to carry out their duties and activities.

During the past year, the NEU orchestrated a series of teachers’ strikes, including eight days of walkouts in May, before the pay dispute with teachers was settled in June. The other major teaching union, NASUWT, also undertook industrial action but on a lesser scale.

And Mr Carolan said that he believed that it was possible his union were being unfairly treated because of its actions.

‘The NEU did not get any facility time for the whole of last year,’ said Mr Carolan.

‘You have to wonder whether they don’t want to give us this time to do our jobs as union representatives because we have done such a good job in negotiating pay rises for our members this year.

‘We are looking at taking action on this and may need to take it to the States. If you look at the NASUWT, they had two days for facilities time during the last year.

‘We are a similar size to them, so I don’t understand why we don’t get the same. We should at least be getting a day of facility time so we can take the time off from our normal jobs to support our members.

‘We are at a point where we have tried to do things the nice way but that seems to have made no difference, so we are looking to alternative ways to deal with this.’

Several employee groups entered into disputes over their pay deals for 2018, 2019 and 2020 with the States Employment Board during the last year, including teachers and nurses. The JCSA Prospect and Unite unions, which represent civil servants, are still at loggerheads with the board, while other groups have managed to negotiate settlements.

In response to Mr Carolan’s comments, a government spokeswoman said: ‘The government is committed to supporting unions to carry out their legitimate trade union duties, including the provision of paid time away from their day jobs to represent their members at meetings, hearings and so on.

‘The employer goes to great lengths to ensure that unions are able to field a representative or, often, a team whenever they need to do so, and knows of no union that has not been provided with adequate facility time to enable them to do their work.

‘There are no circumstances in which facility time has ever been declined because of a union’s stance on any issue. This would be contrary to the States Employment Board’s active support for collective bargaining.’

– Advertisement –
– Advertisement –