Is joining the GMB the answer?

The GMB's recent 'call to arms' to tied pub tenants rounded off one of the industry's most difficult years in living memory.

Never mind collapsing pub stocks, falling sales and hitherto 'safe' businesses going into administration, the idea that a trade union could put the wind up the sector as the GMB has done would have been fanciful thinking at the start of 2009. What a difference 12 long, hard months make.

The City seems to think there are signs that some - some - companies may make a decent fist of things, regardless of what a new government does to the fiver in the consumer's pocket.

But meanwhile the pressure on thousands of licensees - tied and 'free' - continues apace. Should the blame be laid squarely on one set of shoulders? Some think so. The involvement of a trade union in what is effectively a self-employed sector poses interesting questions. Can it effectively and legally represent tenants? It believes so.

The GMB says the nature of the supply relationship puts it at the forefront of its representative duties. It is confident that tenants buying out of their tied agreements are protected under an act of Parliament, claiming the tie makes it a trade dispute. I guess we'll see.

But however disgruntled a tenant may be, is joining a trade union the answer? I'm not sure. I have sympathy with fraught tenants and I have sympathy also with the traditional family brewers who would be badly hit by the tie being removed and who believe the tie issue is a red herring as far as they and their tenants are concerned.

These businesses believe the real battle needs to be fought with those politicians who see the pub game as an easy touch, for tax revenues and to blame for society's ills. A battle on two fronts then? Perhaps.

Clearly mediation failed. New codes of practice are a step in the right direction, but evidence of improving relations between tenant and landlord needs to be tabled and tabled fast, or this one will run longer than an Agatha Christie whodunit…