'Still open for meaningful discussions with Tata Steel'

Unions representing workers at Tata Steel in Britain will go on strike on June 22, according to a statement from the GMB union, marking the biggest industrial action in the British steel industry in over three decades.Roy Rickhuss, General Secretary, Community Union in an in an interview to CNBC-TV18’s Kritika Saxena said the company gave them no option but to take this action.He said:” Tata Steel has not shown willingness to return to meaningful negotiations.” They only made statements but have not negotiated yet, he added.According to him Tata Steel could still to avoid the strike situation but only if they are prepared for meaningful discussions.He said the strike on June 22 will be a 24-hour strike.Below is the transcript of Roy Rickhuss' interview with Kritika Saxena on CNBC-TV18. Q: Just break this up for us; is this a definite strike that you will be going through? I believe there were some kind of negotiations with Tata Steel – Have all those talks failed?A: Well we are not in talks with them because they are not talking to us. So, it is very difficult to have negotiations with the company that doesn’t talk to its workforce representatives. So in light of the fact that they do not want to talk to us and have meaningful negotiations, we have no option, the company have pushed us, enforced us into a position where we have to announce the industrial action that the workforce intend to take after what was a very strong vote for industrial action by the workforce.

Q: Was this a unanimous vote? I believe there were four trade unions present today, was this just a unanimous vote or were there some that were voting against the strike?A: The meeting today that took place was between the National Steel Committee which is all of the national officers- the senior trade union officials in the UK representing the four unions who are involved with Tata Steel.The ballot which took place previously leading up to this meeting were by the workforce themselves and my union community voted 96 percent to fight the company on their proposals to close the British Steel Pension Scheme. So, today following the vote, the national steel officers-the senior officials had to meet to decide what action to take in support of the dispute.Q: June 22 is the date that you have outlined in your statement. Is there a timeline that you can give us? Would this be an indefinite strike till there is some kind of clarity from Tata Steel or is there a timeline that you have in mind?A: No, what we are going to do is- we have to give seven day’s notice legally to the company. That is a legal requirement in UK law, so we intend to give the company- what we have agreed to do today is to give the company the legal notice as soon as we can, we have got our legal people working on that notice now so that we get the legal requirements correct.

We will then give notice to the company and then seven days after we give them the notice, we will commence an overtime ban and work to rule and that will be continuous, so there will be no overtime (people working any additional hours). Now we believe that across the company there are lots of people working additional hours, that will stop. People will not work any additional hours, they will work their normal hours and no more. Then probably around about the  June 16-17 dependent on when we can get the legal notice in, as well as the continuous overtime ban, there will be a strike on the June 22. The strike will be over 24 hours, it will be a 24 hour strike but then following that action if the company does not comeback to the table to negotiate with the trade unions, we will then consider further strike action.Q: Are you still open to negotiation? If Tata comes back with a detailed plan and softens its stance, are you open to it?A: Absolutely, we always have been, always will be but they need to negotiate, not just talk to us.

Speaking to CNBC-TV18’s Sanjay Suri on June 9, Roy Rickhuss General Secretary, Community Trade Union said: “ It is very sad that we have reached this position. People need to understand there are not many trade unions that work in steel industry. We believe in working in partnership, in good relationship with the company and for over 35 years through the days of British Steel, Corus and now Tata we have had excellent relationship. By negotiating and talking to each other sensibly we have been able to deal with many issues and we have managed to find solutions to lots of challenges.”Speaking about the situation he added: “ We began discussions with the company back in November about the future of the British Steel Pension Scheme and we were prepared to make significant concessions and we were prepared to recognise the challenges that the company has and to look at the benefits and the way the scheme is funded. Unfortunately the company was hell-bent on confrontation form day one. I have never known a situation where the company is not prepared to negotiate meaningfully with the trade unions.”