The Unite Amicus union is to stage two lunchtime meetings in Edinburgh next week to brief its members at Standard Life on its plans to trigger the formal procedure for seeking collective bargaining at the company.
The union claims to have at least 10% membership in the company which employs over 8000 including 7000 in Edinburgh. It needs to prove that figure to the Central Arbitration Committee, which can then order a ballot in which 40% of the bargaining group must take part and of those 50% must be in favour of introducing collective bargaining.
Standard Life, however, believes that allowing Unite Amicus to represent staff would "work against its strategic intent", according to its private briefing to managers.
A two-page memorandum, key elements of which were revealed by The Herald last week, was prepared by new employee relations manager Richard Holden and given to managers at a meeting with strict instructions that it not be taken out of the room.
It lists "key messages" for managers, the principal three being that Standard respects each individual's right to choose how they are represented, that the company is committed to direct communication with employees at all levels, and that it believes that "a refreshed approach to working with the staff associations is a better way to engage with its people" than collective bargaining with an external trade union.
The memorandum's "supporting messages" play up the role of the staff associations and warn that in a collective bargaining unit "there is no opt-out".
It warns that the ballot system could mean "21 people (out of 100) could determine the contractual relationship for the 100", and that collective bargaining would "bring an adversarial approach into the company that not all employees would welcome".
Staff would have to give up their existing right to agree an individual contract and have to give way to the collective view as interpreted by the trades union, says the memo.
"The company is strategically moving towards a high performance organisation which focuses more on the individual's relationship with the company."
On the company's controversial changes to staff pension rights, which sparked the rush to union membership in the company earlier this year, Standard tells managers that the staff associations had "effected significant changes" to the original unpopular proposals, and claims: "A trade union would not have had the same level of access to information and senior management as the staff associations have."
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