Lloyds Banking Group has announced that it is derecognising Accord and Unite for collective bargaining purposes for all staff in Grades D – G with effect from 1st January 2025.
And these two weak, ineffectual organisations [I refuse to use the words trade unions] have just accepted their fate without any fight whatsoever. A member of Unite said: “I joined a union. My union decided to stop representing me without even trying to fight for me”. That member’s left and hundreds of Unite and Accord members have left over the last 24-hours, disgusted at their organisations’ inaction. Those staff are now joining BTU.
Lloyds bought Accord and Unite off with the promise of a ‘Skills Agreement’ that isn’t worth the paper its written on. Another pointless, talking shop with no power whatsoever. We’ll discuss this in more detail in another Newsletter.
It seems that even Lloyds have had enough of the lickspittles that are Accord and Unite. We’ve always said that trying to please Lloyds at every opportunity to get some miserable crumbs from the negotiating table was always going to end in tears. And that is what’s happened. If you sup with the devil, then were always going to need long spoons. Accord and Unite had teaspoons!
Both Accord and Unite have a history of caving into Lloyds when things start to get tough. In fact, they start running long before there is any suspicion of even a mild disagreement. We only need to mention final salary pensions here. We were the only union who balloted their members on industrial action. Accord and Unite caved in immediately and never gave their members the opportunity to vote for industrial action. We wanted a united front against Lloyds, they wanted capitulation.
As we have said in our previous Newsletters there are going to be some difficult decisions to be made by Lloyds over the next 18 months ranging from how many more jobs are going to be transferred to the Technology Centre in India as part of Platform 3.0; regrading of roles, new pay scales and job families, significant redundancies in back office roles with staff being forced out with inferior redundancy terms and Lloyds forcing more staff back into the office. The ‘40% rule’ will quickly become ‘60%’ and then ‘80%.’.
The 3 staff forums proposed by Lloyds, which we will discuss in more detail in our next Newsletter, will be made up of careerists and Bank stooges. They will do nothing and say nothing to protect Grade D+ staff.
A few years ago, we could have accepted the recognition arrangements that Lloyds was offering, as Accord and Unite did at the time. But, we knew then that it would mean giving up our principles and independence: in the event we’ve adapted and survived and are still the biggest (in fact the only) thorn in the Bank’s side. And that’s what we will continue to be, whilst fighting tooth and nail to protect the interest of our members as we showed when taking on the financial might of Lloyds on behalf of 10,000 non-signers. In the end we won a stunning legal victory. We also won the biggest pension case in the last 30 years on behalf of active and retired staff.
We will be covering some of these issues in more detail in future Newsletters. In the meantime, members with any questions on this Newsletter should contact the Union’s Advice Team on 01234 262868 (choose Option 1).
MEMBERS SHOULD PASS THIS NEWSLETTER ON TO THEIR COLLEAGUES SO THEY TOO CAN BENEFIT FROM THE ONLY INDEPENDENT TRADE UNION IN LLOYDS AND HALIFAX