Union urges pubs to 'strike'
One of Britain's biggest unions, GMB, will this week write to 37,000 publicans, urging them to join it and vote in a national ballot over industrial action it says will be a 'strike' at tenanted pub companies such as Enterprise Inns and Punch Taverns.
Sit-in: Brian and Allison Forgie are facing eviction for breaking the tie.
GMB claims to have signed up more than 3,000 disaffected publicans already and in the letter will reiterate the Office of Fair Trading's findings that tenants tied to pub companies pay £12,000 a year more than those free of the tie.
The letter says the ballot will 'seek a mandate for official industrial action', which it hopes will achieve 'very substantial cuts in wholesale prices and a resolution to a wide range of grievances experienced by the tied tenants'.
Tied publicans must buy beer from pub companies at higher than wholesale prices in exchange for being allowed to run a pub as an independent business.
Paul Maloney, GMB national officer, said the proposed action would see landlords disconnect the equipment used to measure how much beer they sell, and buy their own beer wherever they liked.
'The British public is being ripped off and the British pub trade is being driven to the wall,' he said. 'We are balloting for mass action that will see pubs switching off equipment up and down the country. The price of a pint of beer would then come down in every pub in every town.'
A source close to Punch said there was no legal basis for such action and it could amount to criminal damage, claiming that the union was making a 'mountain out of a molehill'.
Brulines, the Aim-listed company that supplies measuring equipment to all the major pub companies, has been under attack recently from disgruntled publicans claiming the equipment does not record beer flow accurately, something that Brulines denies.
Meanwhile a protest is planned on Thursday at The Globe pub in Letchworth, which two months ago was named the most improved pub in North Hertfordshire by the Campaign for Real Ale. Tenants Brian and Alison Forgie have been given ten days to quit by Punch.
The couple, backed by the Pub Revolution movement of disaffected tied publicans, say they are being treated harshly by Punch for buying beer off-tie just once, and will refuse to leave the pub.
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