Trade Union Access to Workplaces

Debate between Paul Sweeney and Danielle Rowley

Tuesday 4th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Sweeney]

Believe it or not, that did not happen. I managed to survive my experience in fruit and veg largely unscathed. My hon. Friend makes an important point. People never know when they will need a trade union until they do. It is critical that people join, because it is like an insurance policy. We need to educate people in that necessity.

My first adult job was in a shipyard. It was a traditional engineering and manufacturing company—a large-scale employer—where there was significant trade union density. At that point, I joined the Unite and GMB trade unions, because they were the shipyard trade unions. They ably represent the workforce on the Clyde and are often mentioned in this place. I ran into trouble from time to time in the shipyard and my trade union was critical in helping me get through those difficult periods. If I had a dispute with my bosses or another issue, the officials were very helpful. I did not know when I would need them—when a bit of bad luck could strike. It is critical that people understand why trade union membership is so important.

[Danielle Rowley]

My hon. Friend is giving a detailed analysis and a great speech. Does he agree that there is less trade union membership in the third sector? It is often seen to be the nice sector, but it employs a lot of young people and women, and we need to encourage more trade union membership within it.

[Mr Sweeney]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. She makes a good point about the gender disparity. It is interesting to note that female membership of trade unions has increased in the past year, but male membership has decreased. That does not read across the different sectors that she mentioned. It is important to recognise that issue, particularly when we look at casualisation in the workforce, which is a key driver of why workers are taking home less in their pay packets than they ought to.

Traditional collective bargaining in large-scale organisations and traditional large industrial workplaces are fragmenting, and the way people work is continually atomising. We need to adapt our trade union regulation and organisation to reflect the changing nature of our economy. The charity sector has not been penetrated by the trade union movement to the same extent. We need to tackle that. Great thought must be given to how to increase recruitment to trade unions in those non-traditional workplaces.

I will offer another view as to why trade union membership is so critical. In the past few months, I have been dealing with a major industrial dispute in my constituency. The Caley railway works, which has been around for 160 years, faces closure. From 1948 to 1995 it was part of British Rail, but it was privatised and sold off. It has been through myriad different owners, culminating in an overseas company purchasing it in an asset-stripping exercise. There are 200 people on that site, which faces closure. Thankfully, they have high trade union density—90%, which is fantastic—because the railway works was a traditional workplace. The trade union was able to swing into action immediately when the closure was announced.

In stark contrast, when the immediate closure of Jamie’s Italian was announced, the workforce were completely blindsided and had no capacity to organise and effectively agitate against that exploitation. People were told to go home with no recourse, redundancy payment or share in the liquidation of the company. With the potential closure of the Caley railway works, the trade union was able to organise to bid up the terms and conditions of severance for the workforce. The liabilities of the workforce were originally assessed as being about £700,000 to close the site. The trade union has now managed to negotiate almost £4 million from the employer to wind up the site. That is an amazing achievement, and the company has even offered to try to sell it or pay the Government to take the site off its hands, because the owners just want rid of it. That is just one example of how effective negotiation by trade unions can massively improve the hand of workers who face really difficult disputes with their employers.

I pay tribute to the tenacity of the Caley railway works workforce, who are facing the most testing conditions and were told just before Christmas—as is often the case—that they would lose their livelihoods. People have been working there for generations. Families have grown up and lived around the railway works their whole lives, to the point that in some cases people felt there was no other way out but to take their lives. The stress that the workforce have had to deal with has been absolutely appalling. I pay tribute to their tenacious work, particularly by Pat McIlvogue of Unite the union, in organising the workforce and keeping their spirits high at a really tough time. I hope the Government in Edinburgh will step in and take action to save those jobs and the workforce, because they deserve it. They deserve to have that commitment shown to them by the state.

The Government and trade unions can work in co-operation to ensure that we salvage the collective knowledge and skills of our workforce and redeploy them in the future, rather than see the industrial vandalism that has so often happened across this country, where we have seen industrial capability destroyed. With the lack of a trade union to organise, agitate and struggle against it, there has not been the fight that could have been mounted. I pay tribute to everyone in the trade union movement who has fought so hard for workers’ rights to capture a better share of workers’ efforts—in the form of labour—in wages, and to secure their rights and those of future generations who will follow in their footsteps, so that we have a prosperous society that gets a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.

No Confidence in Her Majesty’s Government

Debate between Paul Sweeney and Danielle Rowley

Wednesday 16th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

When I think of the confidence that I have in this Government, I think about how they have treated the most vulnerable people in our country. When I think of my constituents, I think of a 10-year-old boy who was orphaned when his mother died. Instead of nurturing him, trying to care for him and providing him with security, this Government threatened to deport him. That was a most shameful act and a disgrace, and it is typical of this Government’s hostile environment policy. For that and many other reasons, I have no confidence in this Government. It is about how they have treated my constituents and many vulnerable people across this country. It is also about how they have handled this negotiation in such a feckless and dysfunctional manner. They could not agree ahead of time what their negotiating objectives were. There was no spirit of collaboration, even after the Prime Minister lost her majority in this place. There was no attempt on a collegial basis to agree negotiating objectives for this country and to deliver in the national interest of this country. That was not achieved. Indeed, this Government have subverted democracy at every turn when it suited their interests, even though they do not command a majority of the popular consent of the people, or even a majority in this House of Commons.

Even though this is a hung Parliament, the Government have packed their Select Committees with Tory majorities by procedural sleight of hand. They repeatedly seek to circumvent or abuse the Sewel convention in their dealings with the devolved Administrations. Indeed, this Government became the first Administration in parliamentary history to be held in contempt of Parliament.

[Danielle Rowley (Midlothian) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, in Scotland, people will be watching this thinking it is an absolute shambles? The Government rode roughshod over us and we have no trust, no faith at all, in this Government. We need a general election now.

[Mr Sweeney]

Absolutely. We need a general election because there is no way to clear this impasse. There is a clear lack of faith in the Government and a clear lack of will from the Government to engage productively to reach out to build a national consensus to achieve the way forward. It is now the job of Parliament to take control. The only way to do that is to reset the clock, have a general election and allow a new mandate to be formed in the interests of delivering for the people of this country. That is the only way to do it. That is why I will be supporting the motion of the Leader of the Opposition tonight to bring down this failing Government and to deliver a mandate that will act in the national interest of this country.

St Rollox Railway Works: Closure

Debate between Paul Sweeney and Danielle Rowley

Monday 14th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

It might be the small hours, but I rise to speak on no small matter. It is a very important matter facing Glaswegians in the future: that of Scottish engineering. The St Rollox locomotive and carriage works in my constituency, which has existed since 1856, is now under imminent threat of closure and I rise in support of the workers there, 200 of whom face the loss of their livelihoods, which is of great concern to the city of Glasgow.

The works were built in 1856, for the Caledonian railway. The new works were built on the site of the first railway in Scotland, the Glasgow and Garnkirk railway. To this day, it is still affectionately known as the Caley. Given that it has existed since the dawn of the railway age, it is very sad that we could be witnessing the end of an industry that is synonymous with the community of Springburn in which it was built.

During the second world war, St Rollox joined in the war effort, producing, among other things, Airspeed Horsa gliders for the Normandy landing airborne assault. Cowlairs, nearby, also produced 200,000 bearing shells for Rolls-Royce Merlin engines. For more than 170 years that community has been at the forefront of Scotland’s engineering excellence. Indeed, anyone growing up in the city of Glasgow will have visited, and will be familiar with, the city’s transport museum, and will have seen all the wonderful steam locomotives that were built in Springburn, more than 25,000 of which were sent to all corners of the earth. That is a real pedigree of Scottish engineering, which endures to this day. It would be appalling if the last vestiges of such a wonderful tradition were to be lost, and we, along with the trade unions, believe that that is entirely avoidable.

St Rollox has endured through nationalisation and privatisation. In 1948, when it was nationalised as part of British Railways, it became the primary Scottish centre for the repair of rolling stock, and it retains that role to this day. After British Rail Engineering Ltd was privatised in 1988, the site was operated as a rail maintenance facility by British Rail Maintenance Ltd, along with Eastleigh, Doncaster and Wolverton. It was then a nationalised industry, but during that period its size was reduced from 150 acres to about 15 today. In 1995 BRML was privatised and the site was sold to Babcock International and Siemens, along with the Wolverton site. The sites have been paired ever since. In 2002, both sites were sold to Alstom, a French-owned company, and in 2007 Alstom sold the site to a company called Railcare.

Railcare was placed in administration in July 2013. Although I was not a Member of Parliament then, I remember the great anxiety that that caused. However, from anxiety came great hope when, in August 2013, the site was acquired by a German-based engineering group, Knorr-Bremse. In 2018, it was sold to another German company, an industrial turnaround specialist called Mutares. In November 2018, just a few weeks after its acquisition, it was formed into a newco known as Gemini Rail, which was a wholly owned subsidiary company of Mutares but also associated with Knorr-Bremse—for instance, sharing the same company house number. It is clear this has been an exercise conveniently designed quickly to rationalise operations in the UK.

As at December 2018, St Rollox continues to carry out component and rolling stock repairs and overhauls. Recent work has included overhauls of class 156s, class 158s and class 320s for Abellio ScotRail. It is the largest rolling stock repair site in Scotland. Two smaller sites in Kilmarnock are operated by Brodie and Wabtec respectively, and are still operating at capacity.

In December last year, shortly after acquiring the site, the new owner announced very suddenly that it planned to close the works, stating that it was making losses of between £3 million and £4 million. Unite, which represents more than 90% of the workers on the site and which conducted an inquiry, believes that the actual losses amounted to only about £1 million to £1.5 million. After a meeting with the managing director of the site, it was conceded that the real losses made by the company that year were only £1 million to £1.5 million at St Rollox, but it was forecast that there would be larger losses in the future as the UK rolling-stock industry was transformed, with new stock coming on line, and there was less demand for repairs and maintenance of legacy rolling stock.

[Danielle Rowley (Midlothian) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech on an issue about which I know he cares deeply. Does he agree that this is another example of far-removed managers making decisions that have an impact on workers who keep our industry alive, and that we need to reverse that and put the power back into the hands of those workers?

[Mr Sweeney]

rose—

Universal Credit Split Payments

Debate between Paul Sweeney and Danielle Rowley

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Danielle Rowley]

I absolutely agree, and I hope that the Government listen to that important point.

Although clearly detached from reality, it was somewhat unsurprising that, when I spoke to him, the Employment Minister believed that there was no problem with having to request split payments. That is because the Department has not been collecting the data needed to identify the issues surrounding domestic abuse and universal credit. It has only recently finally started publishing statistics on the number of households that request split payments, although it still does not require any information on why people request them.

When I asked for statistics on the number of people experiencing domestic abuse who are on universal credit, I was informed that that information is not available. Without the relevant data, the Department cannot ensure that people are effectively supported. The Work and Pensions Committee report states:

“the lack of data on split payment requests and abuse disclosure means there is no systematic way of understanding, identifying or disproving any relationship between financial abuse and UC.”

How can we help people when we do not have the data to work on?

The Government response to that report, which I believe is being published today, states support for the recommendation to prioritise gathering and publishing data on abuse and split payments, including the reasons for requests for split payments, so they seem to agree with it. Yet the Government also state later in the document that

“providing data on the reasons for split payments is not something the Department is currently considering as we need to consider sensitivities and protecting our claimants as a priority”.

That just sounds like an excuse for not collecting the data, as there are many ways of collecting it in an appropriate and sensitive manner that ensure that the claimant’s data is protected.

Of course, as a Scottish MP, I have to talk about the situation in Scotland. The case for automatic split payments is so compelling that earlier this year we won the argument on the need for split payments in Scotland. Thanks to the hard work of Scottish Labour, all parties, including the Scottish Conservatives, supported my colleague Mark Griffin’s amendment to the Social Security (Scotland) Act 2018, securing a change in the law. As such, the Scottish Government have committed to use their powers to split payments automatically. Given that the Scottish Tories supported automatic split payments in Holyrood, Conservative party policy appears to be confused. The Scottish Tories have seemingly failed to influence their party on this harmful policy. That is disappointing and weak, and it shows how little power they hold.

Looking at the practicalities, now that the Scottish Government have committed to automatic splitting of universal credit payments, the Department, which retains the practical responsibility to implement split payments through its automised digital payment system, must work with the Scottish Government, as well as relevant civil society organisations, to ensure that the decision is appropriately implemented. It needs to do that quickly and positively, scoping out and agreeing different forms of trial and of splitting the payment.

[Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful speech on the compelling case for split payments. As she says, the system being rolled out in Scotland defaults to split payments. If that infrastructure is available, surely it would make absolute economic and financial sense to scale it up to a UK level.

[Danielle Rowley]

I thank my hon. Friend for his point.

I welcome the Government’s support for the Select Committee’s recommendation that they view the introduction of split payments in Scotland as an opportunity to learn about carrying out such a system. However, there is very little detail in the Government’s response about how they plan to do so. There is no mention of carrying out the evaluation recommended by the Select Committee report. The Government’s response states that they will implement the policy on the Scottish Government’s behalf

“when it is feasible to do so”,

but sets out no detail of the current plans and timelines.

I would like the Minster to answer the following questions. What is the Department’s timetable? Have the Scottish Government proposed a possible split formula? Have they told the Department that they are preparing prospective regulations, and has it been consulted on them?

For the sake of women across the UK, the Government need to follow Scotland’s example and agree to adopt automatic split payments UK-wide. The recommendation is to view the introduction of split payments in Scotland as an opportunity to further consider whether, on the basis of evidence, there is a case for splitting payments by default in the rest of the UK. I suspect that, if such an evaluation is undertaken, the evidence in support of split payments will be, as it was in Scotland, overwhelming. However, it could be a lengthy process and, for many women, it would be just too long.

In the meantime, given figures released last month that showed that just 15 out of 880,000 households benefit from split payments—I was shocked when I heard that figure—what is the Department doing to better promote the option of split payments and to reduce the associated risks of opting for it? The Government have taken an important step recently, acknowledging economic abuse as significant by proposing to include it in a statutory definition of domestic abuse for the first time, but how does that fit with the wider Department’s policy on split payments, which supports economic and wider domestic abuse? Is the policy in contravention of the Government’s own position on domestic abuse? Can the Minister also please tell me, in the light of the draft Domestic Abuse Bill, what discussions have been had on split payments?

Automatic split payments will not prevent abuse altogether in households claiming universal credit. Some abusers will find a way to control their partners regardless, but automatic split payments are a significant step to ensuring that the state is not implementing a policy that plays into the hands of abusers, strengthening their hand and giving them more power than they already have over victims and survivors of domestic abuse.

Currently, universal credit is paid as a single household payment. It poses a risk to women’s financial independence, autonomy and security, and generally stands in the way of a person’s right to financial independence. The Department and the Government have a duty to ensure that they are providing the right support to survivors of abuse, and currently they are failing in that duty. The availability of the option of split payments is clearly not sufficient. To avoid supporting domestic abuse, split payments need to be a default—an automatic way to prevent abuse.

Strengthening the Union

Debate between Paul Sweeney and Danielle Rowley

Monday 23rd July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Danielle Rowley (Midlothian) (Lab)]

I am upset to be called after the hon. Member for Moray (Douglas Ross) because as a result I was not included in his greatest hits, but there we are.

Over the past weeks, months and years, we have seen the Union becoming weakened or threatened. Some say events such as the Scottish independence referendum, the EU referendum and the subsequent mishandling of the Brexit negotiations have all taken their toll, but underpinning those events is the ongoing wrecking of our communities and people’s trust in politics by this Tory Government. We need to learn from these recent examples when the Union has been at risk, but we also need to evaluate why people decided to vote in their masses for such drastic measures and such changes to the Union.

Constituents who voted for Scotland to leave the UK and for Britain to leave the EU tell me they did so because they wanted change. They are fed up with this broken system that sees the privileged few at the top and then the many, the masses, being told that we all need to bear the brunt—we need to tighten our purse-strings. We are struggling to get by. We are saving up for nice things, but then having to spend savings on essentials instead. People are seeing their local services decimated and their streets full of rubbish, with their councils unable to afford regular bin collections. No wonder people want change.

But we cannot accept the Tory approach of sweeping all of that under the carpet and bleating on about the power of the Union while working people reluctantly turn to food banks to feed their families. But we also cannot accept the SNP approach that we have seen of peddling the lie that everything would be better after independence, while simultaneously hiding austerity in its so-called growth commission.

The Union across our nations is of course a result of hundreds of years of co-operation and decisions taken at a political level. But it is also essentially something that exists in the hearts and minds of people across the UK. For many people, being a part of the Union fills them with pride and in some cases provides them with an identity. However, sadly, in Scotland today, how we talk about our identity has changed. It is a sad fact that, as has been highlighted, some people feel forced to choose between their Scottish and British identities. None the less, there are various events that cut across the nationalistic identities, and I want to share my view of my identity.

I am from Dalkeith in Midlothian, a mining town, and just last weekend I made my way to the “big meeting” which, to explain to other Members, is the Durham Miners’ Gala. For almost 150 years, people from across the UK have made the cultural pilgrimage to Durham to celebrate our shared history and the work we are carrying out in the trade unions and the Labour party to make people’s lives better across the UK. The people who gather there have a shared identity and culture that remains unbroken within mining communities such as mine. I would feel at home in any mining community across the country; whether in Wales, the north-east or Midlothian, I could go into a miners’ club and feel at home and they would literally have the same wallpaper. But of course this identity is not unique to mining communities. My identity is class rather than nationality based, but I absolutely respect every identity that people choose. People have shared identities that come from varied communities, the NHS, common interests and sectors, family heritage and political will.

Recently, people came together in their thousands to promote British values of tolerance and equality. Members from across this House may have joined the thousands of people across the UK who protested against the values and ideas espoused by President of the United States, Donald Trump. We as a country showed that we reject his politics of misogyny and we stand up to hatred. Such demonstrations were held across the UK.

It is for those reasons, and more, that I believe that there is a commonality and a shared identity that exists across the United Kingdom, but regardless of where in the UK people are and where they live, this is being eroded by the damaging and often heartless policies of the current Government. I want to give a few brief examples.

We have a Government who are content with cutting taxes for millionaires, while at the same time cutting benefits paid to the most vulnerable in our society. Across local authorities affected by the roll-out of universal credit, we see soaring shortfalls in councils’ rental income. In my own constituency of Midlothian, rent arrears are up by more than a fifth, with temporary accommodation arrears a staggering 278% higher since UC full service began. Every penny that is lost to local authorities in rent arears represents a person pushed further into debt by this Government and their policies.

[Mr Sweeney]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech about the fact that solidarity transcends borders and is grounded in class politics. Does she also agree that the hostile environment policy in this country is another thing that we need to tackle collectively as one people? My constituent, Giorgi Kakava, who is in the Gallery today, is an example of someone affected by that policy, which we must challenge if all the people of the United Kingdom are to have a secure future.

[Danielle Rowley]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I wonder what the Windrush generation feel about their British identity.

I know that this debate is on the Union, but I feel that it was important to mention those points because many people who come into my office are in need of food bank referrals or of assistance with correcting mistakes in their universal credit payments. They will be seeking a political alternative to the harsh policies affecting their lives, and that is what makes them seek change. I hope that Members across the House, especially those in the Government, will recognise the real and serious threats that these policies are posing to the Union.

For many people, the answer is to rip up the Union and go it alone, but I do not believe that that should happen. We saw that during the Scottish independence referendum, and I fear that the Government have not yet learned from that or from the European Union referendum. If they are serious about strengthening the Union, they should stop their damaging policies and instead look at new ways of strengthening and improving the Union, such as adopting a model of federalism and devolving decision making to local level.

A Labour Government would establish a constitutional convention, as described by my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) , to challenge where power and sovereignty lie in politics, the economy, the justice system and our communities. We want to extend democracy locally, regionally and nationally, exploring the option of a more federalised country. We need a relationship of equals with devolved Administrations throughout the UK. In this regard we differ from the SNP, which has sought the path of centralisation to strengthen the powers and influence of the Scottish Parliament, often at the expense of local government.

So how do we strengthen the Union? We can do it by treating people right across the UK as humans and with dignity; by ensuring that we have equality of opportunity in every community in the UK; by giving workers in Scotland, England, Northern Ireland and Wales a proper wage of £10 an hour and secure work; by valuing all our workers and giving them real protections and good wages; by providing reliable and dignified support for those who cannot work; and by showing respect for our devolved nations, with well funded local councils.

I would like to give the House a quick anecdote. In 2014, I made a film during the referendum campaign, and I was privileged to come here to Parliament to interview the man I am now honoured to call my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner). He gave me a lesson in collectivism. He told me that, in his life and looking through history, he had found that the challenges of capitalism had never been defeated by running away or by separating off and turning our back on things; instead, they had been defeated by coming together and collectively challenging the issues. So, yes, let us be ambitious and let us scream for change and an end to this top-down, unequal and unfair system, but let us choose the best way to reform our society and keep our Union strong at the same time. That is achievable, but it is clear to me—and it is becoming clearer to people up and down the UK—that the only way to do that is to deliver a Labour Government.