Going to the pub industry mediation ball. Or not, if you're the GMB

Thinking about it, that the GMB point blank refused to attend the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailer's latest mediation shin-dig came as no big surprise.

After all, it's in the GMB's interest to promote the welfare of its licensee members and it clearly believes this is not going to be achieved by sitting down in some plush barrister's office in Central London, and having a nice chat on the subject of the beer tie and pub rents with those pubco types.

The forthright language used by the union in its pooh-poohing of the get-together, which took place last week and to which it'd had not even been invited, apparently, was reminiscent of the good old days of industrial set-to's.

The mediation process, so said the workers' organisation, was a 'sham', little more than a 'paper chase' conducted by 'suits', designed to 'hoodwink' and 'sidetrack desperate publicans'. So two fingers then to the ALMR - and anyone else attending its gathering.

Instead the GMB's going to get organised. Support for tenants will be forthcoming, it said, for those threatened with eviction and legal advice for those facing what it describes as "unjustified charges".

I guess staying away from the mediation process enhances the GMB's standing with licensees. I can see its point; it would rather be on the outside of the industry tent peeing into it, than being on the inside, being peed upon.

Others take a different view. GMB's rival union, Unite, is 'in the tent'. Even Fair Pint, while still pushing for a full Competition Commission inquiry into the sector, concedes it is worthwhile to engage with the mediation exercise at this stage.

But how does the pub sector's strategy appear to those to whom it is appealing? For all the talk of mediation and compromise - for believe me, there will be no railroading going on here - the industry still seems unable to speak in unison. Of course there are disparate interests and these have to be coralled effectively.

Yet how effective will - or indeed can - it be, given such differences? I ask this at a time when the gambling industry, for example, is stumping up £5m off its own back to fund research into 'problem gambling' and it likes co-operating with its constituent parts no more than the pub trade does.

If I was a cyncial politician when assessing the pub sector's efforts at presenting its case - rather than merely a cynical hack - the words 'half' and 'baked' might spring to mind…