A Legislative Prompt? The TUC Perspective on the 2000 Recognition Procedure

Abstract

The Employment Relations Act (ERA99) included as its main plank a new statutory union recognition scheme, but encompassed other important new entitlements, such as the right to be accompanied at grievance and disciplinary hearings and rights for part-time workers. Union recognition was regarded by the TUC as the ‘jewel in the crown’ at the time though. Other measures such as the National Minimum Wage were hugely important, but union recognition was a new collective right that signalled a political declaration of support for trade union presence in the workplace.

The Employment Relations Act 1999 represents the most significant advance for workers’ rights for many years and the trade union movement can be rightly proud of the co-ordinated campaign that has helped to produce this Act

(John Monks, General Secretary of the TUC in the foreword to the TUC Guide to the Employment Relations Act, TUC, October 1999).