“In 2009 our sick pay benefits were changed for the worse; in 2010 we were told about the changes to the pension scheme, and this year it was the Sunday premium payments. To be honest we are dreading what‘s coming next!”
This was the reaction of a PDA member to the recent 25% reduction in hourly rates for Sunday working.
The member was incensed at the rationale given for reducing her pay by a senior manager who wrote “Being better for every customer on every day will mean us giving something more of ourselves….. and it may mean for a valuable minority giving up something we value….. for some colleagues it may mean giving up future benefits,”
Some pharmacists who can only work on Sundays because of their caring commitments were likely to have their entire income reduced by a quarter.
Throughout its plan to alter benefits, Boots seems to have put a lot of store on its relationship with the Boots Pharmacists Association (BPA). Frequently in correspondence the company mentions the fact that it consults with the officers of the BPA and appears to go out of its way to bolster the association’s credibility. Someone somewhere must be asking themselves the question; why is Boots so interested in courting BPA, whilst it refuses to consult with the PDA Union, an organisation that has three times the number of Boots pharmacists in its membership?
During the 26 years I was an employee of Boots, I served as an executive member of the BPA and I know only too well that the BPA decided at a very early stage in its development that it wanted to preserve a relationship that allowed it direct access to top management.
Indeed in my time the association was often persuaded that if it became involved with another union or sought a negotiation agreement that the ‘special relationship’ may be lost and be replaced with more formal channels and I don’t believe that anything has changed.
BPA has always been run by dedicated and well meaning individuals but it appears to me that in its recent involvement in some of the big issues affecting pharmacists it has perhaps inadvertently positioned itself as an ally of the company joining forces against the PDA and I believe that this has harmed the interests of Boots pharmacists.
As I see it, the BPA relies on very limited options for seeking legal advice and for employment matters relies on the legal helpline provided by its legal defence insurance provider. Services such as these have employment specialists at hand but will not have a specific, dedicated service for pharmacists and therefore their advice is likely to be generic.
In order to combat the highly intellectual and creative legal team of a large employer organisation who may have a progressive programme of reforming the employment relationship with its pharmacists, from my experience, a union requires a much more sophisticated set up.
The PDA Union directly employs lawyers, paralegals and experienced and trained pharmacist advisors who currently deal with more than 40 new pharmacy employment dispute cases each week. We also rely on specialist barristers for opinions in the more complicated cases. When this experienced set up is blended with a solid understanding of the pharmacy political and professional environment we can provide the very best and most up to date advice and support in employment disputes.
There are a number of issues where our legal opinion and therefore our approach have differed significantly from that of BPA.
Responsible Pharmacist
We believe that the BPA was too willing to accept the company’s position on RP and acquiesced too easily to the explanation provided for the RP advanced sign-on procedure.
The PDA Union made a case for insisting that the new regulations changed a pharmacist’s statutory responsibility thereby affecting their terms and conditions and fought off the company’s attempt to force pharmacists to be on an unpaid break whilst remaining signed-on. Through a series of formal grievances supported by the PDA and attended by PDA Union reps we extracted an acceptance from the company that being absent but signed-on was not a statutory break and the decision to remain signed-on was a personal one.
The PDA also protested against the way that the RP regulations were interpreted. We believed that pharmacists were being intimidated to sign on through the Advanced Declaration Template (ADT) as RP in advance of them physically presenting themselves so that the pharmacy operation
could commence in their absence. The PDA challenged the company’s position and our members who grieved at their treatment received confirmation that it would be a personal professional decision to operate the ADT and not a managerial diktat.
Despite our success the BPA were highly critical of the PDA. In a news sheet the association supported the company’s position with regard to the implementation of the ADT when their Chief Executive Officer stated “They [PDA] raised a number of concerns, many unfounded.” He conceded that “a number of points raised by the PDA did cause some members [of his association] to question BPA” but then provided the superintendent pharmacists with columns within the BPA
newsletter countering the PDA’s reasoned position. While describing his discussions with Boots as being indicative of “helpful clarification” (of the ADT), the Chief Executive of BPA claimed that the PDA was “being run by people who are not in touch with modern retail pharmacy”.
As the General Secretary of PDA Union, I think that from the 4,000 or more disputes we deal with on behalf of our members every year, I have a more rounded grasp of the harsh reality of modern pharmacy practice than most.
The PDA Union took the position that the actions of Boots were tantamount to increasing pharmacists working hours with no additional financial recognition whatsoever and that this was totally unacceptable. A view that I am sure would be supported by the majority of Boots pharmacists.
Sunday rates
With the proposal made by the company to cut pharmacists’Sunday pay rates we again believe that BPA were too passive. The Chief Executive Officer of BPA stated that he had been “tipped off in February” but had apparently been “sworn to secrecy” until the announcement was formally made.
Perhaps the association was flattered that the company took it into its confidence, but where was the preparation to challenge the action when it was made public? Rather than there being an immediate organised campaign as soon as the announcement was made, all that we saw had emerged was that a Boots employee went on to the company web forum and said that he had been told by BPA that what the company was doing was “legal”. Once the PDA had been involved and issued advice to members BPA then produced a news sheet which advised that one of the ways that pharmacists may wish to make up their losses would be to seek extra hours of work at other times. Surely working longer for the same pay does not seem like a very ‘member friendly’policy?
By contrast, The PDA’s advice to Boots pharmacists was to challenge the method by which the employees’terms and conditions were being changed. Our advice based on counsel opinion is that the proportionality of the cuts (given that the company reported over £1 billion profits) and the potential for indirect discrimination were both grounds upon which the company could be legitimately challenged.
Boots will no doubt argue that they have a sound business case for making the changes and may seek to reduce the pay of their pharmacists without their agreement. In that eventuality, recent case law suggests that they may have a struggle on their hands if even one single person takes them to a tribunal for an alleged unlawful withholding of pay.
These scenarios demonstrate the difference in approach between the two unions in holding an employer to account on behalf of its members. A more low key approach may have been preferable in the past where the company was pharmacist centric and paternalistic. The direct informal access to senior (pharmacist) directors within the company may have been worth something back then, but times have changed and pharmacists are coming to realise that they must be able to defend themselves against the erosion of benefits and the challenges to their professional autonomy. A union, to be worthy of the name is constitutionally bound to protect the terms and conditions of its members and the PDA is proud to say that two of its five objectives attest to that.
Seeking formal consultation rights
As a now accredited independent trades union, in May, I wrote to Alliance Boots requesting that it voluntarily agrees for the PDA Union to negotiate and consult on behalf of its members. The company rejected our request, in essence intimating that because pharmacists were part of the
‘store team’they do not consider them to be a separate ‘negotiating unit’and in any event they receive the views of their pharmacists through the BPA.
Boots must know that there is a reason why many times more pharmacists have chosen to join the PDA than BPA yet they have rejected our approaches to enter into a voluntary arrangement. The next step is to decide whether or not to apply for recognition formally whereby the Central Arbitration Committee will be the judge on whether or not pharmacists can constitute a ‘bargaining unit’in their own right.
We believe that there is a very strong chance that the authorities will accept our arguments because of the statutory and professional responsibilities that pharmacists carry as part of their role which differentiates them from the rest of the store staff.
It is becoming increasingly clear to me that pharmacists need the support of a strong and independent trades union in an organisation as large as Boots.
The time has also come for Boots pharmacists to demand that their union is given formal consultation rights so that their interests receive the representation that they truly deserve.
If you are already a PDA member then we ask that you support us in this task, if you are not yet a member, then we urge you to join as soon as possible to further underline our representational credentials.
Time to make a choice; which organisation do you want to represent you?
As Pythagoras once said “Choices are the hinges of destiny.”
Article published in Insight Summer 2011