Two new publications examine ways in which workers’ views can be better represented in corporate decision making in the private and public sectors. The TUC’s ‘
Beyond Shareholder Value – the reasons and choices for corporate governance reform’ is a wide ranging collection of 17 essays on various themes of which the most significant is that of representation, focusing on who participates in decision-making and proposes potential reforms including mandatory worker representation on company boards. The Scottish Government’s
‘Working Together Review: Progressive Workplace Policies in Scotland’ looks at industrial relations throughout Scotland, and how greater engagement between employers, trade unions and government could have a positive effect in workplaces, sectors and nationally.
#stuc14 Collective bargaining is now essential for our economy, UNISON's Jane Carolan told the STUC annual congress in Dundee today.
In a 'back to basics' speech she called for a new manifesto for negotiating rights.
"These rights must be enforced and enforced together-we should not accept half measures or other attempts to distract us", she said.
#TUC13 The first and probably most important fringe meeting at this year's TUC Congress set a high standard for those that follow. At a packed joint IER, CTUF and CLASS event, Professor Keith Ewing and John Hendy QC launched a new publication ‘Reconstruction After the Crisis: A Manifesto for Collective Bargaining.’ In 1978 82% of in the UK were covered by collective bargaining but workforce coverage is now down to 23%. The demise of collective bargaining structures in the UK has been the most significant factor in widening inequality, low pay and poor working conditions such as zero hours contracts:
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/f683f4-collective-bargaining-must-be-won-back#.Ui1iolpwbIV
‘Since the early 1980s, living standards for most of the UK’s workforce have becoming progressively detached from growth. The gains from a growing economy became increasingly unevenly divided in favour of a small group at the top, leaving significant sections of the rest of the population (roughly the bottom 60 percent) lagging behind the average rise in prosperity, and at an accelerating rate’ writes Howard Reed. As well explaining the declining wage share Reed proposes a new social contract to...
In recent weeks it has been good to see UNISON at the forefront of the campaign against zero hours contracts. As Dave Prentis
said in the Guardian ‘the vast majority of workers are only on these contracts because they have no choice. They may give flexibility to a few, but the balance of power favours the employers and makes it hard for workers to complain.’ The key question is what is to be done by unions about this insidious problem which is now prevalent across the public as well as the private sector? On the
IER blog Keith Ewing sets out practical measures for a new legal framework to end the abuse of zero hours contracts. While we wait for a worker friendly Government to amend the Working Time Regulations, Keith’s proposals make an excellent negotiating brief for union branches to challenge any employer who denies workers guaranteed working hours and pay.
Professor Keith Ewing argues that the ECB/EU/IMF Troika have shown "a contempt for legality and an indifference to legal obligations" in imposing austerity measure as a condition for offering Greece financial support. He cites the destruction of "an entire collective bargaining system in Greece" and the enforcement of public sector pay cuts and wage reductions - as contrary to a treaty signed by the EU in 2008 and Greece's own constitutional rulings on managing labour relations. "The impact in Greece has been devastating, the consequences greater than on any other EU country and the impact on the national labour law system has been so dramatic that it requires some kind of legal response. Who has the right to determine the constitutional structures of a sovereign state? That's what's at issue in Greece"
http://www.ier.org.uk/blog/greek-austerity-illegal-says-uk-professor
“Collective bargaining will save this country” declared John Hendy QC at the launch rally for the Campaign for Trade Union Freedom. “By putting money into the hands of workers and not those already on £100,000 or more, or into profits of firms who do not invest it in the economy, we will defeat austerity” he said to passionate applause.
As UNISON’s NJC Committee prepares to meet on 27 February to consider the NJC Employers
derisory pay offer it is worth starting with a reminder of just how parlous the state of local government pay has now become.
It may seem to be blindingly obvious to those of us in all levels of the public sector that we generally do an efficient job with a view to minimising costs and keeping the service as good as possible. But this reality has been body slammed by a mantra from Pickles and others before him that we are overpaid, over compensated and that our unions are costing the tax payer a fortune in times of austerity. If only we were like the private sector the austerity high priests claim.
An award winning 'fly on the wall' film made in 1985, Final Offer takes an inside look into the 1984 contract negotiations between the Canadian branch of the UAW and General Motors. It is a unique insight into corporate power, the dynamics of negotiations, solidarity and union governance. It captures the tense events which led to the birth of the Canadian Auto Workers Union - by parting company with the US based international union:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjJp63qwm8A
Amongst the news reports on Jimmy Saville's serial sex crimes, the Royal rush to hospital with morning sickness and the continued denigration of the poor, you may have noticed that union members in Michigan USA were demonstrating over something called the `Right To Work` Bill (RTW). Far from being a progressive statute to increase employment rights and terms it is designed to finally break trade unions:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-20682190
Living wage week had a high impact launch with yesterday’s Observer article by David Miliband MP and UNISON General Secretary Dave Prentis, which stated that ‘poverty pay has no place in the 21st century’ and noted that 200,000 workers in local government are paid below the living wage of £7.20. There is a collective bargaining solution to this scandalous situation. The NJC pay claim submitted last month calls for ‘a substantial flat rate increase on all scale points as a step towards the longer term objective of restoring pay levels and achieving the living wage as the bottom NJC spinal column point.’ What better way for politicians of all colours to institutionalise a living wage in local government by abandoning the pay freeze and holding meaningful negotiations on the union side claim?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/03/miliband-prentis-living-wage
http://www.unison.org.uk/acrobat/B6085.pdf
Larry Katz - a retired Canadian Union of Public Employees Research Director of over 30 years - has written a very useful and interesting set of 10 proposals for trade unions to consider in Canada, but they could easily be adapted to the UK in general and some to UNISON in particular. He makes the point that this is the conversation we have to have with each other and with workers:
http://ourtimes.ca/Between_Times/article_228.php
The 11th Congress of the COSATU, South Africa's trade union centre, ends today in Braamfontein. The Congress was opened on Monday by COSATU President, Sidumo Dlamini, who gave a wide ranging address on global and national issues, placing the tragic events in Marikana in the context of a South Africa where '54% of the workers receive no regular wage increments or have their wages determined solely by their employers. Yet Capital has been calling for the need to decentralise or even abolish collective bargaining. The reality is that currently bargaining councils cover just 9% of the workforce, while only 23% of the workers` wages are negotiated directly through unions'
http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?ID=6523
The Labour Research Department has completed the TUC Equality Audit 2012 - which monitors unions’ efforts on equality bargaining - and reports that the political climate of austerity and economic retrenchment is making it more difficult to get employers to address equality issues.
..The 2012 report covers 36 of the TUC’s 54 affiliated unions, accounting for more than 97% of total TUC -affiliated membership. UNISON is one of several public sector unions to report that there has been “a reduction in meaningful Equality Impact Assessments being completed and equality objectives are being diluted”
http://www.lrdpublications.org.uk/publications.php?pub=LR&iss=1628&id=id134498
Danny Boyle’s brilliant display at the opening of the London Olympics has rightly been widely acclaimed. It represented the real history of these Isles – a history of exploitation, class struggle and political achievement; rather than a history of stately homes, King’s and Queen’s, and the National Trust,
writes Keith Ewing.
Americans for Tax Reform is the powerful right wing lobby upon which the UK’s Taxpayers’ Alliance is modelled. Its President Grover Norquist uses as a platform on the Guardian website to map out the coming republican offensive against public service unions and the Democratic Party, following the failure to unseat anti-union Republican Governor Scott Walker in Tuesday’s recall election:
The latest edition of LRD's Workplace Report (No 100, March 2012) has an interesting feature on the fragmentation of collective bargaining and a new approach by unions targeting the supply chain of large companies and organisations - in order to improve labour standards at suppliers.
TUC research identified that a 'reputational risk' strategy can be used to force 'client leverage' on employers down the supply chain
(see below) http://www.strongerunions.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/TUC-ESRC-Research-Bulletin-No-1-March-2011.pdf
