Trades Union Congress 150th Anniversary

Baroness Prosser Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2018 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Prosser]

That this House takes note of the 150th anniversary of the first Trades Union Congress and the contribution made by trade unions to industrial, social and political reform in the United Kingdom and internationally.

[Baroness Prosser (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased and proud to introduce this debate this afternoon, setting out for your Lordships the reasons why we should celebrate and welcome the continuing role of the Trades Union Congress and why we should promote the valuable role played daily, both nationally and internationally, by individual unions. I draw the attention of noble Lords to my interests as set out in the register.

We often hear people say that the unions are not what they used to be. That may be, but they are still here and, with just short of 7 million members, they are by a long way still the largest voluntary membership organisation in the United Kingdom. Back in 1994, Robert Taylor, then the labour correspondent of the Financial Times, wrote in his book, The Future of the Trade Unions:

“Over recent years it has become fashionable in many quarters to write off Britain’s trade unions, to deride them as obsolete institutions, out of touch with the new realities and incapable of change. Some critics have even suggested that they have completed the historical mission that many of them began in the last century. Not so. On the contrary most of them are still very much alive as they seek, in different ways, to adapt to the severe challenges that confront them through intensive global competitiveness and the adverse social consequences of an increasingly deregulated and polarised labour market”.


He went on to talk about the changed world of individual contracts, total quality management and performance-related pay schemes, and to say that these changes lead people to conclude—wrongly, in his view—that trade unions are anachronistic obstacles to the success of the market economy. In the 24 years since that was written, trade unions have not collapsed but terms and conditions for very many workers have become much more difficult. While capitalism has served those at the top of the tree very nicely, thank you, it has left many others in precarious employment with falling incomes and uncertain futures: we have zero-hours contracts; so-called self-employment; temporary and agency labour; and delivery drivers chasing their tails to keep up with the employers’ demands or else find money deducted from their pay packets.

The Government crow about the UK economy being in really good shape and constantly remind us that we have the lowest level of unemployment for 40 years. That is all well and good, but the “never mind the quality, feel the width” mentality does not bring stability to people’s lives, nor does it enable people to feel that they have a stake in either their employment or even the country.

The Government’s recently produced industrial strategy was big on the need to improve productivity but barely mentioned the role of the workforce, and certainly not the role of trade unions. Crucially also missing was mention of the importance of trained and experienced managers, when all the evidence tells us that good management, inclusive of the workforce, is what makes the productivity difference. As well as a coherent industrial strategy, a strategy towards corporate governance would not go amiss. The Government have recently announced the likelihood that companies over a certain size will have to publish their pay ratios. In my view, that is very necessary, but it is not on its own enough. If there is to be serious action to put the brakes on the massive gap between CEO rewards and the reward of the average employee, which has increased over the last 20 years from a ratio of 47 to 120 times more, there has to be a strategy to make that happen. Publication would of course help but my educated guess is that, without a plan, nothing much will change.

It is believed to be no coincidence that the massive income gap between the top and the average employee has grown at the same time as trade union membership and organised collective bargaining has decreased. All the evidence tells us that workers in union-organised workplaces will have better salaries, better terms and conditions such as holiday and sick pay, greater access to training and upskilling, and more chances at promotion and so on. Looking back over the years, there are numerous examples of trade union-initiated rights and services which have helped many thousands of workers to either gain redress or to be kept safe and dignified in their workplaces. Health and safety; the national minimum wage; employment protection; decent pensions; protection again sex and race discrimination; rights for part-time and temporary workers; equal pay; rights and protections when a company changes hands, the so-called TUPE regulations—the list could go on and on.

Some of these rights have come from Europe but, like TUPE and the equal pay for work of equal value regulations, they were introduced into British law only after union legal actions against the then Conservative Government. More recently, the right of a worker to have access to having his or her case heard at an employment tribunal was restored after legal action by the public sector union UNISON. Some of these actions may be irksome to government, but if we want a country at ease with itself and a population with confidence in society and in its place in society, we need our political leaders to be a bit more on the front foot in recognising the legitimacy of workers’ organisations.

Neither the TUC nor individual unions expect someone else to do their organising for them. There are good examples of current imaginative work. The TUC itself has a major digital initiative designed to increase the awareness of young workers and to help them engage with relevant unions. Unions21, a trade union think tank, is scoping, with the help of a number of general secretaries, ways of increasing understanding of and access to collective bargaining. The charity arm of TU Fund Managers, a financial company established more than 40 years ago by my noble friend Lord Christopher, is working with the Child Poverty Action Group to introduce training for union reps to enable them to help low-paid members understand and claim their in-work benefits. Those in-work benefits are required by those workers, because their employers are happy to pay rates that are so low they have to be subsidised by the rest of us taxpayers. So, yes, we are getting on with it, but we expect the country’s Government to provide an atmosphere of respect and a framework for the collective voices of working people to be heard by those who employ them.

This Government, however, have consistently failed to properly engage with trade unions. Not only are unions currently underrepresented on key public bodies such as the Health and Safety Executive and the Central Arbitration Committee, it appears that the Prime Minister has met Frances O’Grady, the current general secretary of the TUC, only once since she became PM. Ms O’Grady has met Angela Merkel, the President of Ireland and various other international leaders more times than she has met her own Prime Minister. The absence of any contribution to this debate from the Government Benches speaks volumes as to the interests and concern of Members of this Government in trade unions. I accept, of course, that a contribution will be made by the Minister who is here to reply, but that is a slightly different thing.

In her acceptance speech when she was elected as Prime Minister, Theresa May said:

“The government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours. We will do everything we can to give you more control over your lives”.


Providing a legal framework to enable working people to organise together to improve their lives would be a good start.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Prosser]

I thank the Minister very much indeed, and of course all contributors to the debate. I think that I did say in my remarks that we in the trade union movement do not expect the Government—or anybody else, for that matter—to do our organising for us, but what we look for is a framework that welcomes the contribution of the trade union movement.

Despite the warm and much appreciated words of the Minister, there is an atmosphere out there that we all feel—it is not imagined; it is there. There has been enormous difficulty for the TUC in getting its representatives appointed to public bodies, despite the fact that these people come with much knowledge, experience and expertise. There is an atmosphere—to use the phrase that has become a little fashionable at the moment, there seems to be a “hostile environment”—which is something that I am sad about. It means that government departments and Ministers are missing out on being able to make use of and benefit from the vast experience and knowledge of those people who come through the trade union movement. It is a bit of a sadness but, having said that, the debate has aired a lot of knowledge and information, and I once again thank noble Lords for taking part and thank the Minister for his reply. I beg to move.

Motion agreed.