Clarks shoes staff strike a success Fire and hire practices enabled by government

 

Clarks shoes staff strike a success

Fire and hire practices enabled by government

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A ten-week all-out strike by 100 long-serving warehouse workers has forced their employer to abandon plans to use controversial “fire and rehire” practices to significantly reduce their pay and conditions.

Clarks employees in the village of Street, Somerset, reached an agreement with the footwear company following mediation but other groups of workers have been less fortunate when faced with similar situations. Just recently the government blocked attempts to outlaw some aspects of fire and rehire in Parliament.

 Once termed “dismissal and re-engagement”, fire and rehire is when an employer, that would generally seek to negotiate an agreement with trade unions or workers’ representatives dismisses employees but immediately re-offers them their old roles on much less favourable terms.

Cuts to pay and benefits

Clarks has been hit badly during the pandemic. The company suffered a 44 per cent sales drop and a £172 million loss last year. The Clark family, owners of the business for nearly 200 years, sold a majority stake in March to the Hong Kong private equity group Lion Rock Capital, which has cut hundreds of jobs and imposed poorer terms and conditions for new employees including at its distribution centre in Street.

Among planned reductions for established warehouse staff at Street was a 15 per cent drop in basic pay from £11.16 an hour to £9.50. Overtime rates, sick pay benefits accrued over many years, paid lunch and tea breaks, and redundancy terms were also set to be cut dramatically. A Clarks spokesperson said: “It is crucial that Clarks achieves sustainable employment cost.”

According to Trevor Stephens, a Clarks employee for 17 years and an elected Community union representative, the decision to move towards taking strike action was “the result of being told to sign a new contract or be fired. Everyone was given four weeks to sign and if not then an eight-week notice period was to be imposed before workers were to be shown the door.”

When Community then failed to get Clarks to agree to mediation with dispute resolution body Acas, there was a union members’ ballot and strike action began on 4 October. “

We had no option as they were taking so much away from us,” Stephens said. “In my case I was unsure if I would have been able to afford to rent my property. If not then I would have had no place for my children to stay with me when they visit. Other strikers also faced being unable to afford their mortgages and losing their family homes.”

Resolution reached

 Strikers mounted a daily picket line that was crossed by temporary workers desperate for permanent work. Stephens, the picket organiser, worked hard to ensure abuse was kept to a minimum and strikers rejected claims by the company that there were threats of violence towards strike breakers.

The Clarks strike, the first all-out strike in Somerset since a print workers dispute in 1986, was boosted by the largest trade union march this century in the county on 13 November in Street. Delegations came from across England and Wales.

Just before the event, Clarks gave strikers only a few hours to consider a new pay offer of £10.03 an hour, which was rejected.

Now, following Acas brokered negotiations, Clarks has adopted a change of approach and will maintain the £11.16 hourly rates. New contract staff have also had their pay rates increased by 5.4 per cent. The company has also accepted that it will be the norm in the future for it to engage in collective bargaining with the union on all terms and conditions.

In a joint statement, Community and Clarks said: “We are pleased that a resolution has been reached that works in everybody’s interests, protects Community members’ livelihoods, and recognises their loyalty to Clarks”.

Normal working has resumed.

 The outcome at Clarks will be a boost to engineering members of the union Unite striking at Weetabix factories in Kettering and Corby. The union contends that the cereal producer’s cuts to pay terms and conditions are an example of fire and rehire. The company disputes this. Some 80 engineers originally took two days’ action each week but are now engaged in four-day walkouts.

Other attempts at strike action over fire and rehire have produced mixed results. The 44 days of strikes undertaken by 7,000 British Gas employees were unable to prevent job losses and severe cuts in pay and conditions. At Go North West in Manchester, bus workers in Unite took 85 days of action and forced the company to withdraw its fire and rehire tactic but did experience cuts to some terms and conditions.

Earlier this year transport union RMT carriage cleaner members at Stadler Rail UK on Merseyrail unanimously rejected the company’s plans to cut pay by 13 per cent, make large reductions in shift allowances and cut annual leave.

According to RMT regional officer John Tilley: “The company then went over the union’s heads and started individual consultations, and the contract that they sent to staff was worse than the one they had just rejected.”

The RMT wrote, without success, to metro mayor Steve Rotheram, who has partial control of Merseyrail, urging him to take its cleaners back in house to ensure their working conditions were protected. Staff were balloted for strike action.

Some 52 RMT members voted for action, with 21 against. However, under the Trade Union Act 2016, at least 50 per cent of all eligible members must vote and the Stadler ballot was three votes short. The RMT advised its members to sign the new contracts.

“It’s the latest Tory antitrade union laws that are proving to be a real obstacle in so many disputes now,” said Tilley. “We are not ‘building back better’ from Covid-19. The reality for many low paid, vulnerable workers is that we are going backwards. In the case of these Stadler train cleaners that means going back to 1981.”

 “Unacceptable”

The government does not collect statistics on fire and rehire but according to a poll of 2,000 employers by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development more than 22 per cent have made changes to their employees’ contracts during the coronavirus crisis. Of those, one in seven companies – 3 per cent of all employers – have used fire and rehire tactics.

Those who back the process claim companies with genuine and pressing business needs that cannot reach agreements with employees must be able to act quickly. But the TUC, which represents the majority of unions in England and Wales, has calculated that 70 per cent of companies that have used fire and rehire are enjoying profits.

 The use of fire and rehire has been called “unacceptable” by Boris Johnson and the leader of the Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, has said companies should know “better than to behave in this way”.

Prior to the 2019 general election the government promised it would bring forward a new employment bill to improve people’s workplace rights but there is currently no sign of the legislation.

On 22 October, the government also used parliamentary procedures to “talk out” Labour MP Barry Gardiner’s private member’s bill on fire and rehire. Had it been passed, the bill would not have prohibited the practice, but would have forced all except those companies facing collapse to fully consult with employees first, encouraging “both employers and workers to reach the best outcome and discourage bad employers from threatening fire and rehire, where there is not a legitimate threat to the business that demands it,” the MP for Brent North said.

Business minister Paul Scully, speaking for 40 minutes for the government, criticised fire and rehire but said: “I do not believe that this bill as it stands – even if it’s amended, as I do not believe we need that primary legislation to achieve its ends – will actually have the effect… What we need to do is make sure that we can address these situations. We’ll legislate if we need to, but we’ll do it as a last resort.”

The government has asked Acas to produce more detailed guidance on when fire and rehire can be used.

Recently Unite general secretary Sharon Graham criticised the government, saying: “They have colluded to stand on the side of bullying bosses and against the interests of workers.”

MARK METCALF