Ed Sweeney (trade unionist)

Transcription

Well, Acas itself has existed for 36 years now. We started in 1975. But there's been a conciliation service funded by the government since the Conciliation Act of 1896. So obviously people realised at a very early stage in relation to disputes that the intervention of a third party could be helpful. Well, first of all we'll be contacted by one of the parties, either the employer will get in touch with us or the union. Sometimes it's jointly; it's part of their procedures. Or we might see something in the media that there's a dispute happening, so we would contact the parties. What we do is offer our assistance to see whether we can help. We deal with about 1,000 cases a year. About 90% of them we either resolve or they go back into procedures. So it's a very successful form of intervention. That's what we'll be offering to the parties. Well, collective conciliation is where a group of employees, usually represented by a trade union, are in dispute with their employer. We try to find a means by which we can resolve the dispute without either side having to take some form of coercive action, either a strike or an imposition. As you would expect, the majority of disputes relate to pay. But it's probably not as high as people would perhaps suspect. It's usually just over about 50%. It tends to stay around that level. Other issues would be redundancies. That can be a cause of disputes. It could be other changes to terms and conditions outside of pay. It could be problems that trade unions are having with officials and facilities in relation to an employer. It could be an employer trying to change practices, in relation to things like productivity; all those sorts of areas that you would expect that a work force and the employer might find reasons to fall out. Yes, they can. About two-thirds of cases are where the parties have approached us, so either the employer or the trade union, often because it's in their procedures. They'll have a procedure to try and avoid disputes. Within that procedure it often says as a final stage that people should get in touch with Acas. The other third are where we ourselves see that there is something in the media saying that a strike ballot has taken place and we'll then get in touch and we'll offer our services proactively. Yes, it's an entirely voluntary process. I've got no powers to force anybody to come in to talk to us. But what I'd normally say is that the Acas brand opens the door, so that gets us into the conversation with the parties. Then it's up to the skills of a conciliator to open their minds to perhaps a better way forward to try and resolve the dispute. What we'd usually do is try to have a briefing meeting with the parties separately. So either over the phone or sometimes we'll call them in or we'll go to them. So we get a good feel for what the background to the dispute is, what the issues are. Then we'd have a joint meeting, as we call it, where we'll get the parties together. Usually at that initial stage, parties will be in the same room, a conciliator will explain what we are about and, perhaps as importantly, what we're not about. Conciliation isn't about arbitration. Nobody is going to tell them who's right or wrong. Conciliation is about trying to help them negotiate their own settlement. We'll explain what that is and then generally what happens is we go into separate rooms and the conciliator will shuttle back and forward between the parties trying to narrow the gap between them. Hopefully at the end we'll get back together and agree what's been agreed. Well, obviously we're very experienced in seeing these sorts of disputes. So we will certainly be discussing the range of options that may be available in any kind of dispute. If it's a pay dispute, there are all sorts of ways to expand the pot. You can look at making a deal longer, look at it being shorter, look at having consolidated pay, unconsolidated pay. There's all sorts of issues that we would raise. They may have thought of a lot of them themselves. What often happens is that we don't have any magic bullet, but by going in and getting people to think through their options, and perhaps rethink some of the earlier options which were discarded, then a new option can be created which is more attractive to the parties. Well, collective conciliation and collective mediation, collective arbitration... I emphasise the collective element, because often, in an individual context, people will go to what is generally known as mediation, which is where the parties are talking through the issues without any direction from the mediator. But in a collective arena, I think the best way to describe it is to think about whether parties retain the power or not. So in arbitration, what the parties are saying is we are giving up the power to the arbitrator. So they will sign the document which will have a terms of reference asking the arbitrator to make a decision on one thing. When they sign that arbitration form, that is the end of the dispute. The dispute doesn't end when they see the decision and decide whether they like it, it's when they actually say we're going to arbitration. They are therefore giving up the power to the arbitrator to decide what the dispute's outcome should be. We do about 50 of those a year. There's a halfway house between arbitration and conciliation, which is mediation, where, in effect, the parties are giving up some of the power in that they will sign something in advance to say that they are asking the arbitrator to look at what possible solutions might be. And they agree that they will seriously consider those recommendations. Generally, we've covered all of those areas in conciliation. So we only do about two or three mediations a year. Conciliation, where we do about 1,000 a year, obviously the most popular form, that is where the parties retain all the power. They decide whether they want to come to us or not. When they are with us, they decide whether to settle or not. Any settlement they arrive at is their settlement, not something which is imposed by an arbitrator. Perhaps that's why in many incidences people do come to us for arbitration but when we explain the process and when we try to get the terms of reference, we often end up having a conciliation and we resolve the matter in that way. No, one of the key tenets about when parties talk to us, is that it is all confidential. Obviously, when we're going back and forward between the parties we're clear with the parties what we can pass on to the other side or not. But we certainly wouldn't go into the public domain about the details of any dispute and what's been said within the context of any conciliation discussions. I think it's essential for the process that people have confidence that when they're actually talking to us, it is just to us. The other 10% will be more difficult problems. The fact that people come to us in the first place will mean that the issue is a complex one and difficult to resolve, otherwise they would have sorted it out themselves. So there will be ones, and there are ones, where the parties just, even after discussions, aren't able to agree. However, our services are still available and it's not that unusual that parties will go away, they'll reflect upon what's been said in conciliation, and then may well either ask to come back or they'll get in discussions directly themselves to resolve the issue. No. We're funded by the taxpayer. We're independent of government, and a minister can't direct us as to how we carry out our functions. But we are funded by the taxpayer, so there's no direct charge to the parties. They would bear their own costs of coming to meetings, but there's no charge from us. Well, some people actually think that we're part of government, but we're not. That's the whole creation of why Acas came about in the '70s. There was a government conciliation service then, but it was felt it would be better if the body was actually independent of government. So Acas was set up to be like that. We're controlled by a council which has some leading people from the trade union field, leading people from the employer field, leading employment relations lawyers or employment relations academics. They actually decide on how Acas conducts itself and what the general policy is. We obviously have an executive board below that for the day-to-day business issues.