A manager in the leading drilling company confirms in an email to troops offshore precisely what Amicus has all along denied: that the UKDCA is a sweetheart agreement, exclusively of and for the employer (see his email below).
The "agreement" with Amicus that the manager refers to was set up by a group of consultants from a business school attached to Abertay University (until relatively recently some kind of technical college). The employers in fact never meet directly with Amicus. The so-called negotiations are "proxy talks".
The consultants meet with the employers and then go on to meet with the Amicus bureaucrats to tell them what is going down. Lawyers from the IADC (the UKDCA is a device to avoid IADC direct involvement) were first involved in 1999-2000 when several unions were interviewed in a "beauty contest" to discover which union was most "aligned" to corporate needs.
Amicus, having already declared itself the UK’s premier business-friendly union won hands down. Bizarrely, not one single offshore worker was involved in the process to select the workforce representative body.
The purpose of the subterfuge was to defeat WITH URGENCY the upcoming legislation (Employment Relations Act 1999) that gives all employees the right to be represented by a trade union of HIS OR HER CHOICE by means of a secret workplace ballot. The union gaining 40%+1 of the votes MUST be recognized by the employers for collective bargaining purposes under the terms of a LEGALLY BINDING AGREEMENT complete with annual ballots conducted by an INDEPENDENT SCRUTINEER as to whether, or not, pay settlements are acceptable to the workforce.
Under the 1999 legislation the union bureaucrats do the negotiating, but the workforce has the final say by means of a democratic ballot conducted by a third party. The suits in Houston were not happy. We know that because we were passed the internal documentation that says so (download it here: The Rocky Road to Partnership). This is European legislation but, thanks to Amicus, it is presently a dead letter of the law for UK offshore workers, much to the relief of Houston, believe it.
Literally just weeks before the ERA became law in 2000, the UKDCA “agreement” was signed heading off the recognition ballots. A clause in the Act allows the employer to stop a ballot if the ballot’s outcome could challenge an arrangement pre-dating the Act, even if said arrangement was entered into days prior to the Act, and expressly to defeat the Act. The consequence is that workers in one of Britain’s most dangerous and demanding industries, on whose efforts the British economy remains afloat, are presently denied their basic human rights under EU law (the so-called social chapter).
If, as the manager has been informed, Amicus have in membership the vast majority of offshore workers, why then does Amicus continue to work hand and glove with the employers’ consultants (aka UKDCA) to defeat the recognition ballots? Were Amicus to win a ballot it would grab the holy grail of trade unionism — a legally binding recognition agreement under the Act — precisely what they DO NOT HAVE at the moment. The sweetheart agreement, or to give it its proper legal title, “the Voluntary Partnership Agreement”, humiliates Amicus and short-changes the workforce. Perhaps Amicus does have the claimed membership offshore, their invisibility explained by embarrassment to admit it.
Then there is the business of the Employers’ National Insurance Contributions scam that has saved the drilling contractors £10 million + over eight years without the workforce benefiting a single penny. The Amicus bureaucrats were taken for a ride when they agreed collectively to the mass transfer of the workforce to the foreign employment of brass-plate companies set up in tax havens for tax dodging purposes.
Without Amicus’s collective nod (under TUPE) the contractors would have had to acquire the individual agreement of every single offshore employee or risk being sued for unlawful variation of contract. In fairness to the Amicus bureaucrats who were suckered at the time, they did not have the beginnings of a barr’s-irn about what was happening having just been parachuted in from the south. This episode corrupts every ethic the trade union movement has ever stood for and will forever be to the lasting shame of Amicus (the full story here: TUPE Hi-jacked - A Story of Betrayal).
On a positive note, the workforce did not come out of the change to the legislation in 2000 completely empty handed. Every individual has the absolute right to be represented on a personal level by the trade union of his or her choice. In a gratifying number of cases that choice is the OILC. And we are good at it. Sure, we don’t have collective negotiating rights but the truth is, neither does Amicus.
It is OILC that truly has represented the workforce collectively and effectively over the years. Just one example, of many, is representation at the all-to-frequent Fatal Accident Inquiries into the deaths of offshore colleagues, members or not. The FAIs have ranged from the Cormorant Alpha helicopter disaster, the ‘mouse hole’ death, the Brent Bravo tragedy, etc. — OILC all the way, and in every case, delivered for the workforce and the families. Many tens of thousands of pounds spent on fielding quality legal teams with not so much as a brass farthing contributed by Amicus even when their members were the victims. Time the truth was told.
There are a lot of good decent people in Amicus. However, Amicus the organization is hemorrhaging membership nationally (see the website of the Trade Union Certification Officer) because of its leadership’s specialisation in prostituting themselves to corporate needs first, the needs of working people last. Sweetheart unionism is a betrayal of every working person denied decent pay and pensions because of it. Enough. OILC-RMT is the truthful way.
Email from drilling company manager to offshore crew.
Folks,
When I was out last month, at the end of the Harmonisation presentation, I was questioned about the Company’s Union recognition policy. It was stated that the vast majority of our crews are members of a Union that is not recognised by the Company. I said at the time, that whilst the Unite Union is recognised by UKDCA, we have no idea how many members Unite represent. Unite tell us that they represent the vast majority of our personnel offshore.
To further explain UKDCA’s approach, it is useful to look back a little. In 2000 UKDCA held discussions with different Unions before aligning with AEEU (The history of the union movement has been punctuated by mergers in which smaller and more specialised unions come together to combine their resources and increase their bargaining power. The merger between the AEEU and MSF created Amicus, which was followed by mergers with Unifi and the GPMU. In 2007, Amicus merged with the Transport and General Workers Union to form Unite the Union). AEEU represented skilled trades’ people, and was simply the best fit. It was also affiliated to the TUC. The UK Government encouraged employers to enter into voluntary agreements with recognised Trade Unions before this became law to reduce any conflicts that may arise once everything was in place through Parliament. The newly formed UKDCA interviewed quite a number of Unions before deciding that the AEEU/Amicus now Unite were best suited to represent offshore workforces.
Today, Unite boasts over 2,000,000 members, and is the UK’s largest union. It is also worth mentioning that the union in its various names has negotiated and secured a salary increase for our offshore staff every year for the past 9 years.
In short, UKDCA have no plans to change recognition from Unite to any other Union. It also has no plans to extend the recognition to more than one Union at this time due to the nature of our business and all ongoing issues.
Best regards, "Don't look the other way - You could save a life today"