Trade Unions: Skilled Professional Graduate Workers

Lord Addington Excerpts

Thursday 6th July 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, my first task is of course to thank the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, for bringing this subject to us. My second task is an odd one: to congratulate in advance the noble Baroness, Lady Swinburne, on her maiden speech. Of all the ways to make a maiden speech, this is probably the most awkward—so may the wind get under the noble Baroness’s wings on this one. Having had a brief look at her CV and her experience, and indeed the number of letters after her name—I think there are nine, if I counted correctly—she is probably an appropriate person to comment on this debate.

We are now encouraging more and more people to go to university, so we should not be surprised at the huge rise in the number of graduates in the workforce. Anybody my age or older may be surprised at the fact that trade unions are now full of graduates, and one of the most unionised bits of our world is the graduate bases. Nursing is now a graduate profession, as is teaching. These big public service unions tend to be the ones best represented, as are the unions in the big employers. Increasingly, the average member of a union is a person with qualifications at level 6 or just below.

This debate sits clearly between a couple of bits of legislation. One is the strikes Bill, which has been mentioned, or at least alluded to, quite frequently today. To put it bluntly, if the Government are taking away such a fundamental right, I hope that they let us know what we are getting in return, if we agree that in certain cases it is appropriate to take it away. I do not think I have heard that argument fully put forward so far. The one example that comes up is the police. If the Government were to improve pensions and retirement provisions, they might have a case. I have not caught any sniff of that from them. What are they going to do to make sure that people get some sort of compensation for this? What is in it for the worker? These people are highly skilled graduates who have invested deeply in their own training; let us not forget that. They are engaging with the system—they have been told to do that—and they are coming back.

There is the Lifelong Learning Bill, which I do not think anyone has alluded to in this debate, in which we are looking at expanding the way we train and extending the training structures slightly further throughout the system. We should remember that when we are talking about this issue. We have a lot of graduates, but they have to de-skill slightly to get employed in certain occupations. Maybe trade unions will help them. Trade unions would be an excellent vehicle for making sure that people know when to get extra qualifications and change or update their skills. They are perfectly placed; it is part of the job they should be doing. However, if you have an antagonistic relationship with the unions, among other things, the chances of getting this done properly are lowered and there will be more barriers.

A trade union, as has been said, has potential advantages, and we have already heard about collective bargaining. There is less bureaucracy, quicker decisions and people know what they are entitled to. All of this is in the potential of a trade union. None of the trade unions and associations really inspires the idea of “red in tooth and claw” socialism marching down the street—barristers have had a go, for God’s sake, as have doctors. Their whole nature is changing. The days of the mass meeting with hands going in the air are long past.

I hope the Government will give us some idea of how they will involve themselves in the continued professional development of these groups, which have complicated training structures, want to do more and will need to upgrade their skills. The trade unions and trade associations are a vehicle by which this can be done, and there will be some engagement. I hope that the Minister, in replying to this debate, recognises that the Government are responding to a new employment reality and has some idea of what that constitutes.

We are talking about a complete change in the way the workforce is organised. The government sector will probably have the most contact with the union body for the foreseeable future. But we all know that the one way to make a totally wrong prediction about the future is to imagine it as a tarted-up version of the present. We do not know what is coming. The gig economy was supposed to remove all need for trade unions, but it is clear that in certain large sectors, it has not. We are not going to have a gig economy National Health Service any time soon—or at least, I hope not. How are we going to get this interaction? How will we establish good relationships?

I will not mention factors such as pay, as I suspect that any member of a political party who did so would be going the right way about getting themselves shot. However, we have had austerity for many years—my own party was part of this—and it is continuing. There is going to come a point where people rebel. I hope the Government have some idea not only about negotiation, but when they think the hand of government pay restriction will be lifted. Some predict that life is going to get a bit better; that might be an interesting thing to take out of this. I look forward to the maiden speech from the noble Baroness; I only wish that it was in a more conventional circumstance, so that we could give her the praise it probably deserves.