Legal updates

Last week, the government responded to its consultation into the right of trade unions to access workplaces. Under that new right, which is set to come into force in October this year, unions can seek access to a workplace for the purposes of meeting, recruiting or organising workers or facilitating collective bargaining. Access rights will be set out in enforceable ‘access agreements’, with such agreements either agreed between the employer and trade union or, where the union and employer are unable to agree, being determined by the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC).

In its consultation response, the government outlined several features of the planned statutory framework for access agreements. These include that:

• access requests and employer responses must be in writing, with email as the preferred method.
• unions will be required to provide certain information in access requests, including the type of access requested, a general description of the workers access is being sought to and the frequency of access requested.
• similarly, employers will be required to provide certain information in their responses to access requests, including (where relevant) the reasons for rejection of the request.
• employers with fewer than 21 employees will be exempt.
• where the CAC finds that a party has breached the terms of an access agreement, the maximum penalty it can issue will be 75,000 for first breach, 150,000 for second breach and 500,000 for third and repeated...

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