UKtramp:
Rjan you make a very good example of the pension scenario and no doubt one which may affect fair competition, the reality of customers dictating businesses to cut pension contributions in order to cut costs is not really something I have ever witnessed.
It happens all the time nowadays when large, established companies say they “can’t afford” pensions anymore!
I agree powerful employers rarely tell subsidiary employers directly to ditch their pension plans, because it would be incendiary to actually articulate such a demand. In many cases they might not even turn their minds specifically to what attack the subsidiary employer should make on the workforce. What the employer does is just accept the lower bid from the subsidiary employer who doesn’t have a pension plan, and carry on accepting the lower bid either until the subsidiary with pensions abolish them to become “more competitive”, or until the subsidiary with the pension plan goes bankrupt for lack of custom (with only the competitor who didn’t have a pension plan, left alive in the marketplace).
And pensions is just one example anyway. It can be any aspect of pay or conditions - overtime rates, redundancy money, sick pay, paid holidays, subsidised canteens, the number of desks and seats in a single room, the location and quantity of workplaces (and the distance workers have to commute out of their own pockets), the speed of a production line, the safety of the equipment and working practices, or even just the security of the employment itself (i.e. temporary or “gig” jobs instead of permanent, indefinite, employment).
If the price is too high then it is down to the tendering company to see if they can sharpen their pencils or lose that customer to a competitor who may want to buy their business. Sometimes the highest price can be rolled up with better products, better value etc, therefore the way I deal with tenders is to look at exactly what it is that the customer wants a price for, is it a bare bones service offering little in value other than price or do they want the bells and whistle type service but cannot stretch their budget to that service, then that is the time for negotiation and compromise. However by negotiating a better deal for the customer they have to realise there will be deviations and alterations to the tender to reflect the lower price. Unions can do little in aiding this normal process, fair competition bribery & corruption laws/ policies are a very real issue and difficult to police and prove as the majority of these hand out deals are normally practiced outside of the business in a very underhand way. A customer asking another company to ■■■■■ the pension of their workers away from their own workers would be looked upon very sternly by an employment lawyer. Even giving out a gift nowadays as a thank you for their business over the past 12 months has to be done in the open and with the higher managers / directors knowledge.
As I say, you’re putting too much emphasis on what is explicitly said. Employers don’t need to say “cut your pension plan”, “cut your overtime”, or “cut your workers’ hourly rates” - they just say “your bid wasn’t the lowest”, and they keep on saying that until you as a businessman get the message and cut something (or, if you resist, until you get bankrupted). On the rearguard, they use political influence to ramp up unemployment and economic insecurity (including things like cutting dole money), so that there are workers available and willing to be drafted into shiny, new, competitors firms doing the same thing that existing firms already do, but with inferior pay and conditions to the firms being attacked.
I mean you don’t have to look far for examples - look at how the pay and conditions on petrol contracts have dwindled together with the proliferation of subcontractors and white fleets and all the rest of it in contrast to each oil company directly employing its drivers like in the past. You don’t really think it was all about “efficiency savings” do you, as opposed to naked attacks on pensions, wages, and the unionisation which underpinned them?
When drivers all worked for one firm, they saw their common interests more easily, whereas now because their bosses claim to have independent businesses (even though they’re all filling much same petrol station tanks and fuel bunkers as 25 years ago), workers compete their own wages into the mud - even cheer when their company wins a new contract, when all it means is that their wages are the lowest in the market, and somewhere in the marketplace a company which was offering better wages to drivers just shrank in size or went out of business.