‘Bewilderment’ among staff as PRH derecognises unions
Penguin Random House has derecognised the National Union of Journalists and Unite for collective bargaining with its management.
The move, which breaks a particularly strong history of good relations between unions and management on the Penguin side of the business, is said to have left staff “bewildered” and “nervous.”
Negotiations have been going on throughout the autumn to finalise a new house agreement that would cover all the divisions of the merged PRH company but they failed to reach a resolution, with redundancy terms a key sticking point.
PRH UK c.e.o. Tom Weldon told staff in a memo on Friday (16th December) that there had been several months of discussions to bring all the London employees together under one union agreement.
“In doing this, the most important thing for us has been to have parity and equity for all London colleagues and ensure no groups of people are treated differently on account of where they are based or where they previously worked,” he wrote in the memo, seen by The Bookseller. The agreement had not been reached, and so the publisher’s formal relationship with the NUJ and Unite in London had come to an end, he said.
“In practice you will see minimal impact as result of this,” Weldon told staff. “As an individual you can still be a member of a union and receive their advice and support. We also have an active Staff Forum which represents every area of the business and meets regularly with me to raise your concerns, questions and ideas, and this will continue.”
Meanwhile the two unions issued a joint press release the same afternoon in which they attributed the negotiation breakdown to PRH’s refusal “to honour the collective redundancy terms for the Penguin staff” which had originated under Pearson, or to agree to take the disagreement over this to arbitration service Acas.
Fiona Swarbrick, NUJ national organiser, said: “By de-recognising the NUJ and Unite, PRH has blatantly disregarded the views and wishes of its employees and has significantly damaged the good reputation of the business as being one which cares about people.” Unite’s regional officer Louisa Bull warned: “Unite will strongly oppose this hard-line stance by the management to erode employees’ redundancy rights. This is the thin end of the wedge that could lead to further erosion of pay and terms and conditions for staff.”
Under the arrangements made by Pearson, Penguin staff who are made redundant have a specific entitlement to three months pay plus a month for every year they have been employed. Since the merger, Random House employees have been matching the Penguin terms, but with a cap at 12 years. Penguin Random House is understood to have wanted to include no specific redundancy terms at all in the new house agreement, which would cover all PRH employees. Statutory redundancy stands at a week’s pay per year of service (limited at £479), capped at 20 years.
Weldon commented to The Bookseller: “Historically Penguin Books and Random House have had different relationships with the Unite and NUJ unions in our different London offices. Now that we are one company, we have been in discussions with Unite and NUJ to try to bring all Penguin Random House employees in London together under one new agreement to ensure no groups of people are treated differently on account of where they are based.
“We have been negotiating with the unions for over three months since the start of September. Disappointingly, we have not been able to reach an agreement that achieves this and as a result our formal relationship with Unite and NUJ in London has come to an end.
“There is no change to any individual employee’s terms and conditions.”
Weldon went on: “This has been a difficult decision and one we hoped not to have to take. Penguin Random House is a responsible employer and we have always sought to treat all staff respectfully, responsibly and equally, whether or not they are covered by union agreements.
“We have positive relations with Unite in Frating, Grantham and Rugby and will continue to work closely with them in sites.”
While the derecognition of the unions will not affect employees’ contractual terms – which include pay, hours and holiday, but not redundancy – it does mean the union will be unable to negotiate collectively, as with annual pay rises, or hold chapel meetings on PRH premises. The unions completed the latest PRH annual pay negotiation – awarding staff 1.5% or £400, whichever is the greater – just days before being derecognised.
PRH staff were said to be “bewildered” by their management’s stance, coming after generally good relations between management and unions, and at a time when the company is performing strongly, with the huge success of Paula Hawkins’ The Girl on a Train.
A PRH NUJ representative who preferred not to be named said: “‘The merger between Penguin and Random House three years ago has been productive and positive until now, and the combined company has been going from strength to strength….We have a long history of working collaboratively with the company, the union attitude has always been that we all go forward together.’
Meanwhile PRH Unite rep Andy Taylor noted: “When we did the merger with DK in 2000, Penguin was by far the better off in terms and conditions, but the one thing DK was better off in was their holiday entitlement. [Management] levelled everybody up [to match the best conditions on offer in either business]. We’re disappointed that’s not been the case this time around.”
“If you want to reduce your redundancy liabilities, negotiate them, don’t just chuck out the union. It’s quite a brutal step,” commented one staff member who declined to be identified.
While PRH is not understood to have plans for future redundancies, staffers also said the fact that this issue was at the forefront of the negotiation’s failure made them “nervous”. The headline of a Guardian article published on Friday evening, which first reported the change, highlighted “Redundancy fears”, but without specifics.
Taylor told The Bookseller: “The company is moving the Penguin side out of its Strand office and Transworld out of Ealing by 2020. Vauxhall Bridge Road is staying where it is and another site is being found close by. There are concerns that will mean redundancies. However we’d be surprised if it meant very many.”
He described the response within the staff force to the development as being “absolutely terrific”. He said: “I’m in my 50s now but all of a sudden it has made a younger generation of employees appreciate what we do and why we are doing it. Lots of people are joining for the first time, and others who are members already are now saying they want to be more active.”
The unions are now looking to the Central Arbitration Committee, the statutory body which adjudicates trade union recognition and collective bargaining, to restore their union agreements at Penguin Random House.
Prior to the PRH merger, the NUJ had been recognised for collective bargaining in Penguin for many years, and also had a history of recognition in Random House, although it was not recognised at Transworld. The union is not currently recognised for collective bargaining in Hachette, Simon & Schuster or Pan Macmillan, and in HarperCollins is recognised in Scotland only. However it is recognised at Usborne, Faber, Taylor and Francis and LexisNexis.
PRH: Weldon and unions battle it out
As the fall-out from Penguin Random House’s derecognition of its unions continues, PRH UK c.e.o. Tom Weldon has written to the company’s staff claiming “factual inaccuracies” in the NUJ and Unite’s version of events. He also urged staffers to be aware of all the implications of the unions’ plan to go to the Central Arbitration Committee to get their recognition reinstated.
But the unions have in turn written to Weldon, accusing the company of being “disingenuous” in its description of how it handled the negotiations, and calling for PRH to return to the bargaining table.
Meanwhile authors have also added their voice to the debate, with 140 writers, including Michael Rosen, Meg Rosoff, David Almond, Mary Hoffman, Anthony McGowan, Debi Gliori and Alan Gibbons, signing a statement calling for PRH to reinstate recognition for the unions.
In an email sent to PRH staff earlier today (19th December), Weldon said that “while we completely understand the union has a right to campaign and express their views, there are a number of factual inaccuracies and some important information that we would like to make you aware of.”
Weldon said the company had embarked on negotiations seeking a new house agreement that “would have cemented the relationship between the unions and the company for the future.” He said that the claim that the negotiation was about redundancy terms was “wrong”, and repeated his earlier assertion that there was no proposal to reduce the terms and conditions of any employee. He spelled out: “During the negotiations, the union asked for specific redundancy terms to be included in a new agreement. We did not accept this because this would have meant a broader agreement than the ones that previously existed. At no point did we, the company, propose to reduce the terms and conditions of any employee. Our view was that an agreement could be signed without these new terms included.”
The union is now urging staffers to sign a petition to take to the Central Arbitration Committee to achieve statutory recognition. Weldon warned: “We need to be clear that were this achieved, a statutory agreement would not cover redundancy terms, only pay, hours and holiday. The use of redundancy terms to gain support for this process is misleading.” He added: “The Penguin Random House agreement that was being discussed, even without the inclusion of redundancy terms, was more comprehensive than the statutory agreement that would be achieved at the Central Arbitration Committee.”
He “strongly” encouraged staff members to find out more about what a CAC agreement covers, via the government website. “It is really important to be aware that all London colleagues would be legally bound by a CAC agreement and the decisions of union members would determine every employee’s pay, hours and holiday entitlements,” he said.
Weldon also said the unions’ claim that the company had not responded to them was “simply not true.” “In an email to both the national officers of Unite and NUJ dated 15th December we responded and stated that ‘the door always remains open’,” he told staff. “We also met with the unions formally, both with national officers and staff representatives, eight times over more than three months to try to reach agreement. At the end of this, last week, it became clear that our respective positions were incompatible and our discussions were unfortunately becoming increasingly non-productive.”
In a letter to Weldon, also sent today, NUJ and Unite officers Fiona Swarbrick and Louisa Bull did not address the issues raised about the Central Arbitration Committee, but instead focused on PRH’s approach to the negotiations. They asserted that it was indeed on the “question of the removal of the Penguin redundancy terms” that the discussions had stumbled. “On all other aspects we had an agreement on the language or an understanding on what we are intending to get to,” the two wrote. “While [director for strategy, culture and innovation] Neil Morrison was seeking some clarity on the wider pay issues such as maternity and paternity pay, we did not see this as a deal breaker, and believed we would reach agreement if the talks continued.”
“Your team served notice without any consultation, and then refused to extend the talks or use the services of Acas to assist us. This is not a positive way to reach an understanding and the company are disingenuous when they say they have left the door open. In fact in the last meeting Fiona Swarbrick suggested that we put your proposals to the membership and we were not even given an extension [to the negotiations] to do this.”
The union officers commented: “Your decision to derecognise your employees with no regard to their wishes is a flashback to the poor industrial relations we saw in the newspaper sector in the 1980s and is not a position we expected from a leading company such as Penguin Random House.” They noted that they had had employees joining both unions over the weekend, adding “and we have been approached by many authors who are equally appalled by your announcement.”
“We still believe that a mutually agreed outcome can be found if the company wish to return to the bargaining table,” they concluded.