Samizdata quote of the day Would you have convicted? » When offering your employees a pay rise violates their human rights Of all the crimes against humanity that one can imagine, it may seem hard (or perhaps all to easy) for the visitors to this parish to imagine that, if you are an employer, offering your employees a pay rise can be regarded as legally actionable under principles of Human Rights law, and give rise to a claim for compensation. But such is the law in the United Kingdom, in defined circumstances. Those circumstances being where an employer’s principal or only motive for making an offer (regardless of it being accepted) is to get 2 or more employees to forego their rights to collective bargaining. The situation was recently highlighted in a case involving a UK branch of a German engineering company, Kostal UK Ltd. The employer had a ‘recognition agreement’ for a group of its workers with Unite (the UK’s largest Trade Union). This agreement is described as ‘binding in honour only’, and under it, the employer agreed to negotiate terms of employment for those covered by the agreement with the Union, rather than with the employees directly. it was not, by itself, legally enforceable. However, despite this ‘agreement’ being unenforceable as such, the Union’s ‘right’ to negotiate on behalf of its members is protected by a specific piece of legislation which prevents employers from making offers of different (including better) terms to two or more of its employees if they are (or are proposing to be) covered by a (non-binding) collective agreement between the employer and a Trade Union, if the employer’s motive is to go over the heads of the Union to reach an agreement with the employees represented by the Union. Under this law, it is, of course, for the employer to prove what its motive was for making any offers to its employees in these circumstances, and if the motive (or main motive) is benign, there is no liability. And the risk? An award of £3,907 per employee for every offer that is made. In the Kostal case, it came out at around £422,000 per some reports, as the employer made two offers to around 57 employees. For some bizarre reason, apparently to do with its German parent company, its first offer, made in December, included a Christmas bonus, but its second offer, made in January did not, so two offers were made and two lots of compensation (at the time £3,800 per offer) was due, twice penalising what was essentially a single course of conduct. Why is this ‘law’ in force, you may ask. The answer is that it is to protect the Human Rights of the workers, as, if an employer gets fed up dealing with a Union on pay negotiations, and tries to bypass it, so that the terms of employment of two or more employees covered by a collective agreement are no longer decided in line with that agreement, this is, according to the European Court of Human Rights, a violation of the right of freedom of association. As the judgment in this case puts it: …under Article 11 of the Convention, which provides:

“1. Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

2. No restrictions shall be placed on the exercise of these rights other than such as are prescribed by law and are necessary to a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others…” The judgment goes on to explain the ‘reasoning’ of the European Court of Human Rights (the Strasbourg Court): “In other words, the Strasbourg Court held that states have positive obligations to secure effective enjoyment of Article 11 rights; and if direct offers outside the collective bargaining process can be made and would lead to less favourable treatment of workers who do not accept, that acts as a disincentive to the exercise of Article 11 rights and allows employers to undermine or frustrate a trade union’s ability to strive for protection of its members. So, lest an employer find a Union is asking for Mars and it can only offer the Moon, and it offers the Moon to Alphie and Bill, Charlie’s right to claim Mars is protected by making the employer pay compensation to Alphie and Bill for having the temerity of trying to cut them a deal, or even if the deal for Alphie and Bill is Venus plus Mars. And, lest you ask, if Alphie and Bill accept the offer, it is still enforceable against the employer. Having met someone who went through the gates of Belsen at its liberation, it is hard not to think that Human Rights law is a sick mockery of the dead. I am not saying that this judgment is outwith legal principles, it is starkly in keeping with them as they stand. With this as ‘law’, the UK has a long journey back to a Common Law that can be deduced from reason. Share this...

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