Decision

Validity Decision

Updated 18 August 2025

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

Case Number: TUR1/1469(2025)

18 August 2025

CENTRAL ARBITRATION COMMITTEE

TRADE UNION AND LABOUR RELATIONS (CONSOLIDATION) ACT 1992

SCHEDULE A1 - COLLECTIVE BARGAINING: RECOGNITION

DECISION ON WHETHER THE APPLICATION IS VALID FOLLOWING

AGREEMENT ON THE BARGAINING UNIT

The Parties:

GMB

and

ASDA Stores Limited

1. Introduction

1)         GMB (the Union) submitted an application to the Central Arbitration Committee (the CAC) dated 19 May 2025 that it should be recognised for collective bargaining purposes by ASDA Stores Limited (the Employer) for a bargaining unit comprising “Salaried managers within ASDA Stores Ltd working in ASDA’s distribution network (Asda Logistics Services) across all ALS depots in the UK (these managers are also referred to as Graded or Zone managers in the Depot Managers Handbook and CSP policy document). Their job titles include but are not limited to roles such as: General Manager, Warehouse Operations Manager, Transport Operations Manager, Finance Manager, Transport Shift Manager, Warehouse Shift Manager, Warehouse Department Manager, Transport Department Manager.”^{[footnote 1]} The location of the bargaining unit was given as “23 depots across the UK.” The application was received by the CAC on 19 May 2025, and the CAC gave both parties notice of receipt of the application on 20 May 2025. The Employer submitted a response to the CAC dated 27 May 2025 which was copied to the Union.

2)        In accordance with section 263 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 (the Act), the CAC Chair established a Panel to deal with the case. The Panel consisted of Mr Benjimin Burgher, Panel Chair, and, as Members, Ms Amanda Ashworth and Mr Morris Stemp. The Case Manager appointed to support the Panel was Joanne Curtis.

3)         By a decision dated 30 June 2025 the Panel accepted the Union’s application. Following this decision, the parties reached agreement on the appropriate bargaining unit. The agreed bargaining unit was described as “workers within ASDA Stores Ltd working in ASDA’s distribution network (Asda Logistics Services) across all ALS depots in the UK with the following job titles: Finance Administrator (known in depots as Finance and Depot Administrator), Flow Analyst, Operations Support SME, Stock and Systems Shift Manger (known in depots as Stock and Systems Manager), Systems Operations Manager, Transport Department Manager, Transport Operations Manager, Transport Shift Manager, Warehouse Department Manager, Warehouse Operations Manager, Warehouse Planning Manager and Warehouse Shift Manager. This excludes the roles of General Manager and Finance Manager.”

2. Issues

4)         As the agreed bargaining unit differs from that proposed by the Union, the Panel is required by paragraph 20 of Schedule A1 to the Act (the Schedule) to decide whether the Union’s application is valid or invalid within the terms of paragraphs 43 to 50 of the Schedule.

3. Membership and support check

5)         To assist the determination of two of the validity tests specified in the Schedule,  namely whether 10% of the workers in the agreed bargaining unit are members of the union (paragraph 45(a)) and whether a majority of the workers in the agreed bargaining unit would be likely to favour recognition of the union as entitled to conduct collective bargaining on behalf of the bargaining unit (paragraph 45(b)), the Panel proposed an independent check of the level of union membership within the agreed bargaining unit and a petition supplied by the Union. It was agreed with the parties that the Employer would supply to the Case Manager a list of the names, dates of birth and job titles of workers within the agreed bargaining unit, and that the Union would supply to the Case Manager a list of its paid-up members within that unit (including their dates of birth) as well as a copy of its petition. It was explicitly agreed with both parties that, to preserve confidentiality, the respective lists and petition would not be copied to the other party.

6)         The information from the Employer was received by the CAC on 28 July 2025 and from the Union on 30 July 2025. The Panel is satisfied that this check was conducted properly and impartially and in accordance with the agreement reached with the parties.

7)         The list supplied by the Employer indicated that there were 976 workers in the agreed bargaining unit. The list of members supplied by the Union contained 258 names. According to the Case Manager’s report, the number of Union members in the agreed bargaining unit was 184, a membership level of 18.85%.

8)         The Union also provided the results of a petition in the form of a spreadsheet which consisted of 13 columns headed, “ID”, “Start time”, “Completion time,” “Email,” “First Name”, “Surname”, “I’m happy to sign the petition in support of GMB recognition for salaried managers in ALS,” “Depot name,” “Job title,” “Mobile Number,” “Are you a GMB member,” “GMB membership number” and “Would you like to receive updates about the campaign?” There were 748 typed entries on the spreadsheet. Of the 748 entries, 640 were in the proposed bargaining unit, a figure that represented 65.57% of the proposed bargaining unit. Of those 640 workers in the bargaining unit, 170 were members of the Union (17.42% of the proposed bargaining unit) and 470 were non-members (48.16% of the proposed bargaining unit).

9)         The Union explained that a QR Code for an online petition and a paper petition were produced and shared with salaried managers in their respective depots. The QR code was also sent out directly to salaried manager members. The petition stated:

The GMB trade union is asking for your employer to recognise the union for collective bargaining purposes. We must show that the majority of workers in the ‘bargaining unit’ support our application.

If you do support us, please sign this petition.

Your employer will not know if you have signed, and the petition can be signed by GMB members AND non-members.

“I support recognition of GMB Trade Union as entitled to conduct collective bargaining on pay, hours and holidays on behalf of salaried managers in ALS.”

The Union explained that entries were verified by checking the depot name and job title and that contact details were provided. The Union said that where paper petitions were completed, these were input on to the online petition by GMB staff directly. 

10)       A report of the result of the membership check was circulated to the Panel and the parties on 4 August 2025 and the parties were invited to comment on the result of the check. In a previous letter dated 23 July 2025 the parties had also been invited to make their submissions on the validity tests for consideration by the Panel.

4. Union’s comments on the validity tests

11)       In an e mail to the Case Manager dated 6 August 2025 the Union said that it was happy that the Union had met the validity tests required by the CAC.

5. Employer’s comments on the validity tests

12)       In an e-mail to the Case Manager dated 24 July 2025 the Employer said that there were material issues with the GMB’s membership and petition data which were of concern. The Employer provided further details as follows:

1. “There are material inconsistencies between the data provided by the GMB and our data. There are 70 names provided by the GMB as union members who are not on our list of ALS managers at all. This is a material discrepancy in the quoted union membership number. It accounts for over 28% of the GMB’s quoted membership in the bargaining unit.

2. We took all proper care to ensure the data provided to the CAC is accurate. Without prejudice to any arguments over what the bargaining unit is, we provided data for all our salaried managers across depots using our internal payroll systems. With that in mind, there are a substantial number of duplicates/ unreadable names in the GMB’s petition for support (137). That accounts for nearly 16% of the number of names on the GMB’s petition. Adding that to the 65 employee names not appearing on ASDA’s list means 202 names out of the 871 on the GMB’s petition, or over 23%, are invalid.

3. The names on the GMB’s lists which are also on ASDA’s list only account for 65% of ALS managers. This is a substantial discrepancy.

4. There is scope for manipulation of the GMB’s petition by any person with knowledge of ALS manager names. We have scanned the QR code that the GMB used for its petition and were able to enter anyone’s name and data into it. We could easily input a manager’s data without them even being aware. We did not do so, but anyone knowing ALS managers names could vote for them (or indeed vote more than once as the duplicate votes show). There is no way of assessing the validity of the signatures on the petition. The proportion of workers recorded as signing the petition is such that manipulation of it could affect the GMB showing majority support for recognition.

5. The petition remains open. The QR code for the petition takes the person who scans it to a form. But this form is not dated and there is no reference to a time period within which votes need to be cast.

6. It is important that there is rigour in the way majority support for recognition is evidenced for CAC acceptance purposes. For the reasons set out above, we question whether that rigour exists here. The GMB and ASDA do not know if there has been manipulation of the petition by third parties but it is clear that it can be manipulated in the ways we have identified.”

13)       Following the report dated 4 August 2025 the Employer provided further comments in an e mail dated 7 August 2025. The comments were as follows:

1. “There are material inconsistencies between the data provided by the GMB and our data. There are 74 names provided by the GMB as union members who are not on our list of ALS managers at all. This is a material discrepancy in the quoted union membership number. It accounts for over 28% of the GMB’s quoted membership in the bargaining unit.

2. We took all proper care to ensure the data provided to the CAC is accurate. We provided data for all our salaried managers across depots using our internal payroll systems. With that in mind, there are still a substantial number of duplicates/ unreadable names in the GMB’s petition for support (27). Adding that to the 74 employee names still not appearing on ASDA’s list means 101 names out of the 748 on the GMB’s petition, or over 13%, are invalid.

3. The names on the GMB’s lists which are also on ASDA’s list only account for 65% of ALS managers. This is still a substantial discrepancy.

4. There is scope for manipulation of the GMB’s petition by any person with knowledge of ALS manager names. We have scanned the QR code that the GMB used for its petition and were able to enter anyone’s name and data into it. We could easily input a manager’s data without them even being aware. We did not do so, but anyone knowing ALS managers names could vote for them (or indeed vote more than once as the duplicate votes show). There is no way of assessing the validity of the signatures on the petition. The proportion of workers recorded as signing the petition is such that manipulation of it could affect the GMB showing majority support for recognition.

5. The petition remains open. The QR code for the petition takes the person who scans it to a form. But this form is not dated and there is no reference to a time period within which votes need to be cast.

6. It is important that there is rigour in the way majority support for recognition is evidenced for CAC acceptance purposes. For the reasons set out above, we question whether that rigour exists here. The GMB and ASDA do not know if there has been manipulation of the petition by third parties but it is clear that it can be manipulated in the ways we have identified.”

6. Considerations

14)       The Panel is required to decide whether the Union’s application is valid or invalid within the terms of paragraphs 43 to 50 of the Schedule. In reaching its decision the Panel has carefully considered the submissions of the parties and all the other evidence before it.

15)       The Panel is satisfied that the application is not rendered invalid by any of the provisions in paragraphs 44 and 46 to 50 of the Schedule. The remaining issue for the Panel to decide is whether the application is invalid under paragraph 45 of the Schedule.

Paragraph 45(a)

16)       Under paragraph 45(a) of the Schedule an application is invalid unless the Panel decides that members of the Union constitute at least 10 per cent of the workers in the agreed bargaining unit. The membership check conducted by the Case Manager (see paragraphs 5 to 10 above) showed that 18.85% of the workers in the agreed bargaining unit were members of the Union. As stated in paragraph 6 above, the Panel is satisfied that this check was conducted properly and impartially and in accordance with the agreement reached with the parties. The Panel has therefore decided that members of the Union constitute at least 10% of the workers in the agreed bargaining unit as required by paragraph 45(a) of the Schedule.

Paragraph 45(b)

17)       Paragraph 45(b) provides that the application in question is invalid unless the CAC decides that a majority of the workers constituting the agreed bargaining unit would be likely to favour recognition of the union as entitled to conduct collective bargaining on behalf of the bargaining unit.

18)       The Union carried out a petition of those workers in the proposed bargaining unit. As described in paragraph 8 above, 65.57% of the agreed bargaining unit added their names to the petition. The Panel has not received any statements from those workers in the bargaining unit who had added their names to the petition stating that they wished to withdraw their support.

19)       The Panel has considered the comments made by the Employer (which can be found at paragraphs 12 and 13 of this decision) that Union membership levels were far less than previously outlined by the Union in their application to the CAC however as stated in paragraph 16 the Panel is still satisfied that members of the union constitute at least 10% of the workers in the agreed bargaining unit. In relation to the other points raised by the Employer on the petition the Panel assumes that information provided by the parties is accurate and up to date and that any duplicates are removed prior to submission in this case the Union failed to remove duplicate entries, but this does not mean that the remaining entries (640)  that did appear on the Employer’s list amounting to 65.57% of the agreed bargaining unit can be discounted as inaccurate or unreliable. The Panel is not able to test the validity of the signatures or whether the petition could have been manipulated to show likely majority support, in the same way as it is not able to test whether the list the Employer provided contains details of workers falling outside of the proposed bargaining unit. Taking the above into consideration and on the basis of the evidence before it, the Panel has decided that Union membership of 18.85% when taken with the percentage of non-members signing the petition (48.16%) shows that, on the balance of probabilities, a majority of the workers in the proposed bargaining unit would be likely to favour recognition of the Union as entitled to conduct collective bargaining on behalf of the bargaining unit, as required by paragraph 45(b) of the Schedule.

7. Decision 

20)       For the reasons given in paragraphs 14 - 19 above, the Panel’s decision is that the application is not invalid, and that the CAC is proceeding with the application.

Panel

Mr Benjimin Burgher, Panel Chair

Ms Amanda Ashworth

Mr Morris Stemp

18 August 2025

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1. In a separate letter dated 3 June 2025 the Union explained that due to issues with the online CAC application form it was unable to replicate the description of the bargaining unit to the one included in the schedule A1 application in its entirety. This led to the following job titles being omitted from the CAC application form: • People coordinators • Finance coordinators • Warehouse planning manager • Stock and systems manager. These were included these were included in the original schedule A1 letter dated 28 March 2025. ↩