Arbiter lays blame at PSRC’s door
Thursday 25th June 2009, 4:20PM BST.
THE credentials of Professor Frank Burchill indicate that he knows enough about negotiating to spot a tactical error when he sees one.
A leading Acas mediator and arbiter, his CV details involvement in industries as troublesome as mining, railways and the UK fire service. He is helping British Airways to improve its industrial relations – no small task that – and, over a long career, he has held several senior academic posts in the field of industrial relations.
His letter to the Policy Council therefore warrants strong consideration. In strident tones he welcomes the resignation of the Public Sector Remuneration Committee as the silver lining to an otherwise unpleasant and badly handled dispute.
Bearing in mind that he was brought in to examine staffing issues within Guernsey’s airport fire crew, the professor has been privy to much of the background of this dispute.
His conclusions are clear: it was the failings of the PSRC as a negotiating body that directly led to the firefighters taking the ‘nuclear option’ of the strike. In the process, the PSRC engineered the dispute with one end in mind: arbitration.
As the firefighters implacably opposed arbitration, the dispute could result only in full-scale industrial action, which is what the island got.
It is a damning indictment of the role of the pay ‘negotiating’ body and implies a stubborn streak and lack of subtlety that has done the island few favours.
The professor does, however, see some light in the embers of this conflagration. Firstly, it has brought to a head the inadequacies of the current pay negotiating set-up; secondly, the PSRC has cleared the way for a new system to be implemented; and, lastly, the firefighters are so bruised by the ordeal that a no-strike agreement could be on the agenda.
Such an agreement, backed by new legislation, would be a tremendous relief to islanders, who do not want to be held to ransom by any of the emergency services.
And, while the union is predictably lukewarm on such a deal, firefighters scarred by the furious public backlash to the dispute, might be more receptive now than they have ever been.
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It’s very easy to lay the blame at the door of the PSRC political members.
There can be little doubt that some blame does lie with the political mambers of the PSRC.
Those of us who have been involved in the actual negotiations with the paid negotiators working for PSRC, will appreciate just how difficult it is to get the hired hand negotiators to actually negotiate.
Very easy to blame the political members of the PSRC but if that becomes the “official cause” then the whole truth would not come out of any investigation.
Whether it was the objective of the PSRC to go to arbitration must be considered in the light that the firefighters took money in return for agreeing to go to arbitration. Then they refused to go to arbitration.
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SJ
Just a passing thought or two. Who gives the authority to ‘the hired hands’ to negotiate?
and what was the ‘dispute’ that was going to arbitration?
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Tim
1 The actual negotiating is done by the professional staff. Sometimes the political members are there, sometimes not.
The actual authority of the paid negotiators would depend on the individual chairman of PSRC (or CSB before that)
2 When the firefighters decided to strike (close the airport) that was the industrial action that would allow the process leading to arbitration or tribunal oe whatever.
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