New legislation is bringing far more companies into contact with trade unions — but many businesses are unprepared.
Read the full story here: https://t.co/S7VHRy1DGG pic.twitter.com/H8GbzXDGEh
— Financial Times (@FT) September 20, 2026
Trade unions will have new legal rights to access workplaces, physically and digitally, to recruit, organise and speak to workers. Employers will also have a legal duty to tell workers about their right to join a union, while union representatives and those taking industrial action get stronger protections.
Whether you agree with it or not, this shifts the balance of power in the workplace. If you employ people, especially if they number more than 20, you need to understand what is coming before it arrives. This isn’t an HR issue for later. It’s a boardroom issue now.
This is something that is not being discussed but the new law will be in force by the end of October and it will have impact on pensions.
It will impact because unions have a different view on workplace pensions than the status quo within our pensions bubble. Unions don’t exist to maintain what works for the financial services industry but what works for its members and it’s clear that unanimously the unions within the TUC do not want continuation of DC. It is seen as short of a pension and the phrase that a “DC mastertrust is a workplace pension” is a lie.
I do not see any of the conferences that I see advertised giving a voice to the pension officers of the unions, let alone the power brokers – the deputy and general secretaries of unions like Unite, Unison, Prospect, CWU , ASDAW and a long list of others.
Only First Actuarial of the consultancies has regular contact with the unions, Broadstone has started to reach out, but the Pensions UK Conference has no mention of what the unions might want.
The unions have been excluded from the pension debate and are only considered important within public sector schemes. This is short sighted.
It is true that the unions have recently had deeper penetration into public sector workforces but they are still strong in the private sector and are likely to get much stronger with the backing of this new legislation.
It’s short sighted of the pensions industry to ignore the unions and I hope it will without further delay, recognise the union’s capacity to negotiate that workplace pensions be collective pensions. That they pay a pension not just a pot of money.
The unions are at the door and are unlikely to go away. Whether your employer’s strategy is to fund Nest at AE minima or to have your company’s own occupational scheme funded with reference to the DB contributions going back – your strategy will be considered deferred pay.
Unions will want to see evidence of the pension emerging from your workplace pension and if you cannot evidence what staff will get, then there could be demands for an upgrade.
Thanks to Madeleine Wright and the FT.