Victory for IWGB! Tiny union wins historic case against the University of London

On Friday 15th January 2016, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (EAT) dismissed the appeal from the University of London and found in favour of UoL IWGB Branch Secretary Catherine Morrissey. This means that the University will now be forced to allow staff to choose who represents them.

This is another high profile victory for the Union, who successfully fought for better working conditions for outsourced workers in 2013 via the 3 Cosas campaign.

The ruling was a landmark for UK Employment Law, as it was the first ever case brought under Regulation 15(1) of the Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations (ICE - 2004), which allows employees to complain that the requirements for the appointment or election of negotiating representatives were not complied with. IWGB’s victory has therefore become case law in the UK.

This judgment means that UoL will have to re-run the process whereby staff get to choose the people who will represent them in negotiations with management about what the future information and consultation of employees will consist of. UoL had originally tried to limit staff’s choices to members of recognised unions only.
The judge who heard the case was the Hon. Mr Justice Langstaff, a High Court Judge who until recently was President of the EAT. He is one of the most experienced and respected judges in the area of democratic representation in the workplace.

Giving his judgment, he stressed that ICE Regulations require representation to be for all staff and to be effective, and that the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC) panel, which has extensive industrial relations experience and heard the complaint brought by Ms Morrissey in 2015, was fully entitled to find as it did in the original hearing.

Ms Morrissey said, “This is a fantastic result for IWGB members at the University and for all employees in the UK who want to have a democratic voice in their workplace. The CAC’s original decision and this EAT judgment make clear that it is not for employers to pick and choose who they speak to.”

UoL were represented by top Silk David Reade QC, which we estimate has cost them around £20K so far (about the same amount as a year’s worth of study on campus with a UoL college). The IWGB managed to obtain representation from Jason Galbraith-Marten QC and his junior Sarah Fraser Butlin (both at Cloisters chambers). IWGB’s solicitors were Leigh Day.

UoL now have three weeks to decide if they will appeal again – if they do, that would go to the UK Court of Appeal and be very, very expensive…