As Christmas approaches public sector unions are engaged in a fierce battle to defend jobs, services and pensions. Yet in the middle of it all one of them, the GMB, has chosen to launch a campaign… for a full pint.
It's obviously the time of year. Every press office knows the media will lunge for a booze-related story like Santa after a glass of sherry. Indeed, the Daily Mirror was prompted to carry out its own 'investigation'.
As any beer drinker could have told them, nearly every glass was underfilled – apart from one Wetherspoon pub which had bizarrely managed to overfill by 3%. In all but three instances out of 50, though, the pubs were serving within the 95% pint industry guideline. Why should pubs be able to get away with serving a pint that's only 95% of a pint?
A long-standing agreement between brewers and the government accepts that a pint of draught beer includes a head of reasonable size. Most drinkers, especially those north of Burton-upon-Trent, will appreciate that. A beer with a head not only looks better but tastes different when drunk through the foam. There are very few consumer complaints about short-measure pints, mainly because pubs will give you a top-up if you ask.
Oversized lined glasses would, of course, allow you to have your pint and drink it too. There are corners of the country that have them and use metered dispense, too, ensuring an exact pint, or half-pint, are served.
But outside those areas there's a problem. Some years ago J D Wetherspoon converted its entire estate to lined glasses and there were so many complaints about short measures – when there wasn't – the company, at vast expense, went back to rim dispense.
The GMB, however, has its own angle. For the last couple of years it's been trying to unionise pub tenants, with limited success. In the course of that it's discovered a practice well-known in the industry – of budgeting for 95% pints. Tenancy agreements include a rough trade-off between ullage, or waste beer, and short measures.
It's not an ideal solution, but it's a practical one that most can live with. Unless you happen to be a tenant in dispute using it as a bargaining chip.
Which is fair enough, but the GMB is walking into a dead-end by trying to make a campaign of it. Calling for a full pint is hardly likely to win the support of tenants, and on past evidence will fall flat among ordinary drinkers, too.
It should be using its resources fighting for workers rather than meddling in things it doesn't have the measure of.
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