The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 268 No 7198 p679
18 May 2002

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United we stand? Bringing pharmacy together to speak with one voice

Last week, The Pharmaceutical Journal proposed that an overarching body to represent pharmacy and pharmacists should be formed. Jonathan Buisson hears the views of the pharmacy bodies and looks at the history of unions in pharmacy

The National Pharmaceutical Association, the Company Chemists Association, the Guild of Healthcare Pharmacists and the pharmacy negotiating bodies in all parts of Great Britain have important roles to play. But they have never joined forces or created an overarching body that would be seen by the Government and other health care professions to be the voice of pharmacists, and which employee and locum pharmacists could also join. (All too often this mantle has fallen uneasily on the Royal Pharmaceutical Society's shoulders.) There are some good, and some less good, historical reasons why this type of representative body does not exist, but it is time they were put aside.
(PJ, 11 May, p632).

With these words The Journal called last week for an overarching body for pharmacy to be formed. Speaking to the relevant organisations, we found a willingness to consider this suggestion but without any immediate demand for its implementation.

John D'Arcy, the National Pharmaceutical Association's chief executive, summed up the general view, saying: "Pharmacy desperately needs to create federations, but it is not going to merge into one large body."

Company Chemists Association chairman Digby Emson echoes this, saying: "People have to be realistic. The idea of collaboration is more realistic than forced coalescence. The individual pharmacy bodies do represent different interest groups."

Both say that their organisations would be willing to take part in any discussions that were organised.

Expanding on his comment, Mr D'Arcy says: "The Society's modernisation debate has highlighted feelings of disenfranchisement among employee pharmacists. The NPA does have an obligation to look at whether it could form an employees' section. The community pharmacy sector is a large one now with a wide range of roles being undertaken. However, many of the services we currently provide, such as the information department, are already being used by employees and managers within members' pharmacies.

He notes that there will inevitably be conflicts of interest, but says that these need to be managed. The British Medical Association, the trade union body most frequently mentioned in these kinds of discussion, represents both individual doctors and partnerships, Mr D'Arcy points out.

Many pharmacists employed within the hospital sector are already members of a trade union — the Guild of Healthcare Pharmacists, which is part of the Manufacturing Science Finance (MSF) section of the white collar union Amicus.

Bob McArtney, president of the GHP, says that the guild already works closely with the Association of Pharmacy Technicians and the BMA. It has also worked with the NPA on a joint award for cross-sector care in pharmacy. He is less keen on aformal merger.

"Any merger would leave hospital pharmacists in a substantial minority," he says. "We are traditionally the body that the Government approaches with respect to issues relating to the practice of pharmacy in the hospital environment."

Lessons of history

There have been several attempts in the past to form a similar trade union body for employees outside hospital pharmacy. The most recent of these was in 1997 when a body called Employed Pharmacists in the Community (EPIC) was established. The group subsequently voted to become affiliated to MSF (PJ, 22 March 1997, p393). The group currently has no active status.

Emmanuel Opaleke was secretary to the original EPIC steering committee. He says that, in retrospect, the decision to affiliate to a trade union was probably a mistake.

"EPIC's survival as a stand-alone body was in question, so we went for the MSF link up. However, many pharmacists felt that with the pressures of being an employee it was confrontational to join a union." He feels that the Society could have helped more at the time.

However, he says that this kind of trade union is needed more now than ever before. "If the Society becomes a purely regulatory body then individual pharmacists will need representation."

When the Pharmaceutical Society was formed in 1841 (and until the Pharmacy and Poisons Act in 1933) it was a voluntary membership organisation. As such it was in competition with a number of other representative bodies including the United Society of Chemists and Druggists.

In his history of the Society, Sydney Holloway, the Society's official historian, says that the United Society sprang from dissatisfaction with the Pharmaceutical Society. The two bodies battled throughout the 1860s before the Pharmaceutical Society triumphed in a key Parliamentary battle and the United Society fell into "an incoherent state".

The Pharmaceutical Society's powers to act as a trade union regulating the business activities of its members (such as opening hours, wages and conditions for staff, and prices of goods) were tested in the Jenkin case in 1921.

The Society, through Arthur Jenkin, a member of its Council, brought an action against itself. The judge ruled against the Society saying that it could not act outside the objects of its Charter and that this did not cover the activities it had proposed.

Mr Holloway says that the Jenkin decision referred to old legislation regarding trade unions and the Society's Charter has subsequently been amended. He is currently preparing an article looking at some of the issues facing the Society in its modernisation process from a historical perspective which The Journal hopes to publish shortly.

One consequence of the Jenkin decision was the formation of the Retail Pharmacists Union (now the NPA), effectively as a demerger from the Society. As the NPA's John D'Arcy notes, the development of pharmacy is a dynamic process during which there have been many mergers and demergers.

"The Society itself may now be facing another demerger," he says.

A virtual board for pharmacy

One way forward might be the creation of a "virtual board for pharmacy" bringing together representatives of all pharmacy bodies and sectors to discuss areas of common interest and how areas of disagreement can be handled. Such a body could then claim to speak for pharmacy without having to individually represent all members within its scope.

It would appear that most organisations outside the Society are waiting to see what decisions are made in relation to its regulatory and professional functions. Perhaps then there will be an opportunity to move forward with one voice.