Trades Union Congress 150th Anniversary

Lord Sawyer Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sawyer (Lab)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests as set out in the register. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, for initiating this debate. It is a pleasure to speak on this important subject and, in doing so, to recognise the important contribution that the noble Baroness has made to the trade union movement. Her wisdom, knowledge, tenacity and sense of humour are well appreciated in this House and way beyond it as well.

By definition, we had unions before the TUC. Tom Paine’s pamphlet of 1772 making the case for a pay rise for customs officers, addressed to this House, was probably the beginning of collective bargaining. Sadly, he was sacked for his efforts—the shape of things to come—but he went on to better and greater things, as we all know. It was left to others to form the TUC, which today enjoys 150 years of progress for working people the likes of which Tom Paine would never have dreamed about. It is a beautiful and moving story of ordinary men and women, often facing serious wrongs and deep injustices, who learned that they could achieve more by standing together than they could alone.

It is essential to remember that today, after 150 years, those deep injustices and serious wrongs still exist, both in the UK and throughout the world. The struggle continues and people still fight for basic trade union recognition—for example, at the present time, the workers at McDonald’s are unable to get the business to recognise them and their union for collective bargaining purposes. Do not let anyone tell you that there is no need for trade unions any more.

As a romantic amateur historian, I am now tempted to speak on the area that I like best—the lessons of the Tolpuddle martyrs; why Francis Place was called the tailor of Charing Cross; who supported the matchgirls’ strike; and whether Jack Jones invented the shop stewards’ movement—but I will resist the temptation on the basis that most noble Lords on this side of the House already know these stories better than I do, and noble Lords in the rest of the House, however few there may be today, would be bored.

More importantly, and seriously, this is a time when the trade union movement faces difficult and complex problems, some of which have been outlined by my noble friend Lady Prosser. It is a difficult time for trade unions and we need to address some of the issues. I see these challenges to the world of work in three ways—the first being the world of work as we thought we knew it and in which we have lived for a long time. However, with the fall of the House of Fraser, New Look and Poundland, more and more companies from the world that we thought we knew—and the jobs we did not particularly like—are falling away; we are losing them. Only this week it was announced that Jaguar Land Rover is leaving the West Midlands and going to Slovakia.

Secondly, there is the world of work that we are trying to come to terms with—we are not there yet—which is characterised by short-term contracts, insecure work, no proper benefits, the gig economy and an increase in mental health issues. All these problems are mainly unchecked, continue to accelerate, and are growing at a pace.

Thirdly, there is the world around the corner, the third world—not the Third World as we know it but a new third world here—of robots, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, biotechnology and automatic vehicles. I could go on and on about this world, which we read about but do not know very much about.

The collision of these three worlds presents a huge and complex challenge for all of us—trade unions, employers and the Government—and it is the big thing we need to address. How are the trade unions going to meet these challenges? Certainly we cannot meet them on our own. I will come back to this issue.

Turning briefly to the TUC, whose anniversary we are celebrating, we have an outstanding leader in Frances O’Grady, one of the best leaders that any of us has ever seen. Its annual report shows that the organisation is making serious and often successful efforts to come to terms with many of the problems that we will face in the future. I celebrate that today and thank Frances and the trade union movement for doing that important work.

However, there are a couple of areas where we could make improvements, and I would like to make a few humble and simple suggestions. The big theme in my comments is to ask how we can make a difference in this new world. For example, for more than 20 years I have thought, and others may have thought—heretically—that unions should have outside representation on their executive councils. Unions do not like to hear this but it would include people with the same values and beliefs but from different walks of life. Many of us have seen that arrangement work in other organisations and how powerful it can be to bring people in from outside who do not actually belong to the team. They can add something of value and importance in helping people to think differently.

For example, Frances said this week that the unions are having trouble recruiting young people—so put young people on to executive councils. Do not have a young people’s advisory committee or a young people’s conference—have them on the board of directors. There you will get change from the top and they will get real and lasting change. I can remember in 1975 when my union, NUPE, took the immensely bold step of reserving five seats for women on its executive council—it was revolutionary in those days—and the decision completely changed the union. It had struggled to relate to its women members but, from then on, women started to take power in the union and everything changed. It was amazing how the change happened, and it spread from there throughout much of the trade union movement. So it is important that we consider how we can effect change and do things differently.

It is also important that the unions keep up their leadership development. Trade union leaders are often too busy with the needs of the organisation to think about their own development. Many of the generation of trade union leaders taking part in today’s debate had the benefit of enhancing our abilities through the Cranfield training programme. It was of enormous benefit to me because I learned so many new things. I was challenged by a great deal of change and issues that I did not know anything about. It was enormously beneficial. When I became general secretary of the Labour Party, the national executive went to Cranfield and there were clear benefits at that time. I do not see any mention of it in the annual report but I offer as a generous and humble suggestion the idea that perhaps the trade union movement could reinstate that initiative.

I said earlier that I would return to the three colliding worlds of work which create huge problems for unions, employers and the Government. I say to the Government that it was a big mistake to proceed with the Trade Union Act 2016—I hope that they understand that now—because its provisions are divisive and damaging in the world of work. They were given wise advice at the time by a number of people, some of whom are taking part in this debate today. I can remember the noble Lord, Lord Brooke, and the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, advising the Government strongly from these Benches, in a packed House, about the importance of building involvement and partnership at work and not to include the damaging provisions in the Bill. Obviously, the Government failed to listen.

However, it is not too late. My second theme is that it is not too late for the Government to change their mind and start taking constructive action. During the leadership campaign—the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser, is right—the Prime Minister pledged not only fairness for working people but that she would introduce worker and consumer representatives on consumer boards. She repeated it several times. I could not believe it. I thought, “My God, the Conservative Party is waking up to the real world. It will outmanoeuvre us on this. We should have done this decades ago and now the Conservatives are going to do it”. Obviously it did not happen. It was not to be. However, I say to the government Benches that there is still time to do that.

There is still time to do things differently and still time to make a change. We have to do something different in the three colliding worlds that I have explained. We cannot go on with a community in which the general secretary of the TUC meets the German Chancellor more often than she meets her own Prime Minister. We cannot tolerate that any more. We have got to have a proper dialogue between the trade unions and the Government. It is not too late to start. It requires a leap of imagination and faith. We can talk about cultural issues, about education and schools—we do not have to go in on a hard collective bargaining agenda. The Prime Minister could call Frances in and say, “Come on, talk to me about life and some of the things we need to do—outside the collective bargaining and the hard stuff—where we can work together and do things”. That needs to happen and it is my strong message from this debate today.