If a company receives a request from a trade union for recognition, it should contact its Association for advice on how to respond. The company's main considerations are likely to be whether recognition will lead to an improved relationship with its employees or help achieve its business objectives. For some employers, employee relations are better managed through some other employee involvement mechanism ( Employee involvement ). The company will also need to decide what degree of recognition is appropriate that is, whether it should recognise the union for bargaining purposes (and if so, on what issues) or only for the purposes of providing information to, representing or consulting with the workforce.
Since there is a legal procedure by which a union can secure recognition for bargaining purposes if it has sufficient support (statutory procedure for recognition), the company will need to consider whether it is likely to be able to resist such a claim. Where there is a strong likelihood that recognition could be imposed, the company may prefer to reach a voluntary agreement on recognition with the union. A company that recognises a union voluntarily has more control over the recognition process and its outcome than a company that has recognition forced upon it through the legal procedure. This gives the company greater control over which union it bargains with, which workers are covered by the bargaining arrangement, and the way that bargaining is conducted.
Two or more unions may approach a company for recognition. Recognising more than one union can have disadvantages. Separate negotiations make for a more time-consuming and complicated bargaining process. There is also the possibility of inter-union disputes on bargaining priorities and recruitment issues. These potential problems can be avoided by the use of single-table bargaining, where the employer agrees to negotiate with two or more unions on condition that the unions act on a joint basis when bargaining and on all other collective issues. The employer may agree to the unions acting separately when dealing with their members' individual disciplinary issues and grievances.
If an employer decides to bargain with only one among several unions seeking recognition, it may be able to secure some concessions from that union in return. The union may, for example, be prepared to agree to some form of dispute-resolution mechanism that avoids the use of industrial action.
It is possible for collective bargaining to take place at several different levels. Negotiations may happen at national level, with several employers and several unions bargaining jointly and the resulting collective agreement covering many workplaces in a particular sector or industry. National-level agreements of this type are now rare, but there is, for example, a national agreement in the engineering construction industry.
Within a company, bargaining can take place at several levels. It may cover the whole company, or one division or region of the company, or one establishment or plant within the company. A company might consider it appropriate for different issues to be covered at different levels. For example, negotiations on the company's pension scheme might most effectively be carried out at company level, while negotiations on productivity bonuses might be dealt with at establishment level.
When deciding whether to recognise a union, an employer will need to consider which employees should be covered by the recognition agreement. The group or groups of employees to whom a recognition agreement on collective bargaining relates are normally referred to as the 'bargaining unit'.
The scope of the bargaining unit will usually depend upon the employer's organisational structure and the areas in which the union has sufficient membership or support to make recognition appropriate. A bargaining unit is commonly defined by the type of work that employees do or the location of their workplace or both.
A union may ask an employer for the names and contact details of employees, to enable it to recruit them to the union. The Data Protection Code (code of practice ) advises employers to provide this information only if the union is recognised by the employer, the information is necessary to enable the union to recruit, and the employee has been told his or her information will be released for this purpose and has been given an opportunity to object. The information can also be released to the union if the employee has expressly agreed to this.