GMB: loose cannons or tactical geniuses?
“It’s got to the stage where every GMB press release on the pub sector is treated with deep suspicion on our news desk.”
Nearly four years later, little has changed.
My first experience of the GMB’s involvement in the pub trade came when it sent me a ‘story’ claiming that the Association of Licensed Multiple Retailers (ALMR) was condoning the underfilling of beer glasses by 3%.
'Scandal'
This claim arose after the ALMR had responded helpfully to a GMB question asking how a licensee could achieve 100% yield on beer sales. It said that, because of wastage and line cleaning, the only way it could be done was by underfilling.
The hypothetical was turned into an actual, and a press release accused the ALMR of “making life very hard for honest and decent landlords”.
When the PMA rejected this concoction we too were accused of colluding in this “scandal”.
Fast forward a year, and the GMB issued a release accusing the chairman of the Pubs Independent Conciliation & Arbitration Service of bias. “Why not just run the story?” pressed a GMB rep, before I explained the libel risks of questioning, without evidence, the professional integrity of someone who makes his living as an arbitrator.
'Dodgy'
More recently the GMB, which claims to have over 500 licensee members, has increasingly involved itself in individual tenant v pubco disputes — particularly those in striking distance of its East Midlands-based “representative for tied tenants” Dave Mountford.
His contribution to the lease renewal negotiations between Enterprise Inns and Claire Muldoon, of the Pattenmakers Arms in Duffield, Derbyshire, has been extraordinary.
Mountford claimed a document produced by Enterprise showing Muldoon had opted out of the Landlord & Tenant Act was “dodgy” as it featured the wrong letterhead, declared the pubco to be lying, and reported the matter to Derbyshire Constabulary’s fraud squad.
A police spokesman told the PMA it was satisfied that any perceived inconsistencies in the paperwork “were easily explained”.
'Cavalier'
After the positive conclusion of negotiations, Mountford said, without the merest hint of butter melting in his mouth: “It has been incredibly hard work with a fair amount of unpleasantness but this deal secures the future of the Pattenmakers Arms…” before adding, politically: “We need a mandatory free-of-tie option with open-market rent review in the statutory code. This will offer tied tenants like Claire Muldoon the ability to buy products from the open market and pay a fair market rent for the building.”
It’s easy to see why my predecessor described the GMB’s behaviour as either “cynically cavalier or high-stakes brinkmanship”.
But others might argue that their intended ends — whatever they may be — justify their means. Mrs Muldoon does.
