UK trade union Independent Workers Union of Great Britain lost a High Court case on the collective bargaining rights of outsourced workers at the University of London on Monday.

The IWGB took legal action in a bid to represent outsourced security guards, post room workers and other staff at the university. However, the University of London has refused to recognise the union for the purposes of collective bargaining, arguing that the workers are employed by a facilities management company, Cordant Security.

In January 2018, the Central Arbitration Committee rejected the IWGB’s application to represent Cordant employees as the company already had an agreement with another trade union. It also ruled that the university was not one of the outsourced workers’ employers.

Yesterday’s ruling dismissed the IWGB’s challenge to the CAC’s decision.

At a hearing in February, the IWGB claimed the University of London was “in reality” also the outsourced workers’ employer and that its members were being denied their human right to collective bargaining with their “de facto employer”.

But Justice Michael Supperstone yesterday said “a de facto employer is not a known or recognised concept”.

Supperstone ruled: “I do not accept that Article 11 requires that the union should have a right of compulsory collective bargaining with the university, which is not the relevant workers’ employer and with whom they have no contract relationship.”

“There are, in my view, relevant and sufficient reasons for limiting the right to compulsory collective bargaining to workers and their employers,” Supperstone said. “The university has a right to arrange its operations in what it considers to be the most efficient and beneficial manner. Organisations are entitled to adopt outsourcing arrangements, should they wish to do so, as a legitimate means of organising their activities.”

IWGB general secretary Jason Moyer-Lee commented, “Outsourced workers at the University of London and elsewhere will continue to fight in both the courts and in the workplace until they are brought in-house and treated equally with their directly employed colleagues.”

A University of London spokeswoman said: “We note the High Court’s judgment and its conclusion that the Central Arbitration Committee was correct in determining that the application of the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain for recognition by the University of London for collective bargaining in respect of a group of workers not employed by the university but by Cordant Security Ltd was inadmissible.