Trade Union Access to Workplaces

Ruth George Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Faisal Rashid]

I thank my hon. Friend for that brilliant point. It works for all stages in every sector, regardless of the size of the business. If large organisations practise fairly, it will filter down, especially through subcontractors. It is the responsibility of large businesses to show smaller businesses what they are doing. If they follow the right practices, that will filter down to subcontractors. Perhaps larger businesses could have some kind of contract to make sure that their subcontractors look after their employees in the same way as they do. Large businesses have to set a precedent.

Union members are vulnerable and live in fear of reprisals from their employer. Bupa is one of the largest and highest-profile providers of residential social care in the UK and part of an international health group that serves approximately 32 million customers in 190 countries. It consistently refuses to allow Unison officials access to workplaces to speak with staff and members regarding union rights and representation.

During 2017 and 2018, Unison North West regional officers were banned from every Bupa care workplace, despite assurances that visits could be conducted at the employer’s convenience and with due regard to operational and safeguarding concerns and priorities. I have just mentioned what McDonald’s said about disruption, but unions do not want to disrupt the business at all. They give adequate time before they come, and that is all I am asking for in the legislation. Of course I am pro-business and I support great businesses, but not at the cost of poor workplace conditions for employees.

I am sure I do not need to remind the Minister that the UK is a signatory to the European convention on human rights, article 11 of which states:

“Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.”

Does he not agree that the examples I have listed constitute a flagrant violation of that right? If so, what does his Department intend to do about it?

I do not want to use this debate simply as an opportunity to criticise existing practices, but to propose a way forward. I hope the Minister will listen to my proposals, because it does not have to be like this. By expanding trade union access to workplaces, we can restore dignity and respect at work and put an end to the exploitation and misery we see on the rise today. As I said, I am pro-business and I want to see our businesses flourish, but that should not come at the cost of dignity and respect at work. An alternative is possible.

We can look to places such as New Zealand for inspiration, as well as for evidence that the legislation that I am proposing works. Under the Employment Relations Amendment Act 2018, trade unions there have far greater access to workplaces. Workers in New Zealand can speak to union representatives in their place of work, which has led to higher union membership, higher wages, and fairer and more just workplaces.

Under this legislation, all that is required is that the union provide a short period of notice that it will be visiting the workplace, allowing for management to add the extra staff member needed for the duration of the visit. The situation is beneficial for all involved: disruption to the business is kept to an absolute minimum, while workers’ legal and human right to join and form a union is properly adhered to.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent case. Does he agree that that access is even more important when individual workers are undergoing disciplinary or grievance procedures, and that we need to see a full right to representation for workers in those procedures? At the moment the employers have an unequal force of arms, but resolving these issues could make workplaces better for all employees.

[Faisal Rashid]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was a union rep at my workplace before I joined Parliament, and the number of cases in which I represented my colleagues is unbelievable. There are a number of things that union reps can achieve, working with the employer and of course the workers, and that is crucial.

With the success of New Zealand in mind, I want to see similar legislation adopted in this country. Last month, I presented a private Member’s Bill to that effect, which seeks to remove a number of restrictions on trade unions’ conducting business in workplaces. I have received a lot of support for the Bill from hon. Members, over 50 of whom were willing to co-sign it. However, to date I have not been supported by a single Conservative or Liberal Democrat MP.

Arguments against increasing the collective bargaining power of working people have long been discredited. It is a myth that strong trade unions drive down profit. If strong trade unions drive down productivity, why has the UK long suffered from a productivity gap despite having the most restrictive trade union laws in western Europe? In truth, a happy, well-respected workforce is also a productive one, but the stories I have heard from union officials paint the opposite picture: too many people in this country feel exploited and dispensable at work.

If we are to transition away from a low-wage, precarious economy, increasing the collective bargaining power of our workers is critical. That is why I am fighting to improve trade union access to the workplace. We need strong trade unions and a better deal for working people.

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[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the previous speakers in this important debate. Having worked for the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers—USDAW, the shop workers’ union—for 18 years before coming to this place, I have seen an enormous amount of good practice in a trade union. I am sad to say that, since being elected as a Member of Parliament, I have seen the opposite side of the coin. Constituents come to me with employment cases, some of them really serious, and my first question is always whether they are a member of a trade union. I am really sorry to say that the vast majority are not; if they were, they would not end up in these situations with their employers.

Only 14% of workers in the private sector are in trade unions, so it is a very rare breed who have the benefit of trade union protection at work. While working with USDAW and the retail sector over many years, I often heard from skilled and experienced reps; they had been trained and had done training courses on employment rights, and were far better at negotiating under their companies’ grievance and disciplinary procedures than the managers, who were often straight out of business school, or were moved around shops in different areas and so were never able to build up the expertise that the reps had.

Employers are missing a trick by not seeing trade union representatives as an asset to their workplaces and workforces. Having helped to put together presentations for employers on the value of a trade union in the workplace, I know that a trade union can absolutely bring value for money and productivity to a company. A union can also ensure that a company is doing everything by the book, and can certify that at national level; at local level, the presence of a trade union rep can give people confidence in the management in the company—confidence that things are being done right.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) mentioned health and safety. I am honoured to have the laboratory for the Health and Safety Executive in my constituency. It is really useful to be able to talk to people there about how best to implement health and safety at work, particularly given the decline in the resources that the Government give to the Health and Safety Executive. We have seen inspections decline—they are now done on a risk-assessed basis—but where a workplace has trade union representatives who are trained in health and safety, those health and safety reps do risk assessments and take soundings from their work colleagues, who often feel more able to raise problems with their trade union representatives than with their management, particularly if they are concerned about their safety. That is even more the case where there are people in the workplace with a disability or some other form of impairment. It is so important that they feel that they have that support.

We have some basic rights at work, but in the UK they are particularly basic, and we often see that even those are not provided. We have a system of employment tribunals whereby individuals have to put their head above the parapet, as has been mentioned; they have to show that they are able to make a complaint in order to access an employment tribunal. That does not help the rest of the workforce, who are probably suffering in exactly the same conditions, particularly where the issue has to do with the minimum wage, holiday pay, sick pay, parental leave or flexible working. Those are basic rights at work that we expect to be in place, but too often they are not, and individual employees have to put themselves forward in order to be able to access a particular right. Many feel that it is not worth it; many feel that it is better to move on to a different place of work. That does not help the other people there.

To access the protection from unfair dismissal, a person now has to have been in a workplace for two years. We have an increasingly mobile workforce, so a growing number of people are not able to access the right to claim unfair dismissal, and do not feel that they can access any of the other rights that enable them to take a case to their employer or to a tribunal, especially where they cannot get the support of a trade union representative in that. That is why, as I have said, it is so important that trade union representatives are able to come in and support individual members in a workplace. Even where the union is not the recognised trade union, the trade union reps need to be able to support their members, who are paying for the privilege of membership. If they are paying for that service, it is not right that their employer should be able to deny it to them.

[Alison McGovern]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree, at this moment, when we are trying to deal with cultures of bullying or sexual harassment, that it is very important that when people take complaints forward, they have somebody with them to give them confidence and comfort in what can be a stressful and sometimes distressing situation?

[Ruth George]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. People often spend the majority of their waking lives at work, and the relationships in the workplace are some of the most important to them. If they are subject to bullying or harassment, that affects their whole life and their confidence in taking the issue forward, so having a trade union representative, or a trade union office that they know they can phone for expert support and advice—having someone on their side—is so important, particularly when they are taking forward a case against a manager or another colleague with whom they work closely. That creates very difficult situations for individuals.

It is not just individuals who benefit from trade union membership. The state also benefits from higher productivity and from better pay and conditions, which reduce the reliance on in-work benefits that comes from low pay and low hours at work. Universal credit is being rolled out, and the only thing that employers have been told by the Department for Work and Pensions is that they no longer have to give people set hours of work. With tax credits, people used to need to have a contract to work 16, 24 or 30 hours a week, for access at different points. Employers knew that and were prepared to give those contracts to ensure that people could afford to live on the contract of work. Under universal credit, yes, people can access mini jobs, with fewer hours of work, but that will encourage employers to provide more flexibility within contracts; I am afraid that the Department for Work and Pensions is actively encouraging them in that. They may not be zero-hours contracts—those are bad enough—but they are short-hour contracts, sometimes for as little as four or eight hours a week. People simply cannot afford to live on them, but employers are happy to give those sorts of contracts and to ask people to flex up when they are busy. It gives employers maximum flexibility, but it does not mean that people who are in work can get by.

That is why we are seeing such a huge increase in in-work poverty. Up to 8 million workers—more than one quarter of the workforce—are now in poverty. That is a crying shame for any decent economy, any decent society. If someone goes out to work, they should be able to support themselves; if there are two of them, they should be able to support a family. There are rising house prices, housing costs and rents, but there have been reduced real wages for almost a decade, and people simply cannot afford to live on the wages that they get.

The issue is not just pay but pension provision. Employers with trade unions provide far better pension entitlements than employers who do not recognise a trade union. Again, the state benefits, because it does not then have to provide a top-up where pensioners are falling into poverty. Trade unions that I saw in the workplace helped to keep better pension schemes going for their members. We have seen innovative schemes, such as the Communication Workers Union and Royal Mail scheme, that will help far more workers continue to have a decent standard of living when they retire, and will save the state from having to step in where people fall into poverty because they have an inadequate pension scheme.

Trade unions can bring benefits across the whole range of rights at work, pay and conditions, and pensions. That is why it is inexcusable that no Conservative Back-Bench MPs have bothered to turn up to this debate to, at the very least, discuss the value of trade unions in the workplace and have a robust discussion about their merits and what they can bring to working people who particularly need that support.

We certainly need trade unions in the workplace at a time when employers are possibly facing a lack of labour. Workers from the European Union are returning to their own countries, or countries of origin, and many workplaces are desperate to recruit. They are seeing a recruitment shortage, and they need to ensure that they can provide the best standards and conditions of employment. Trade unions will help them to do that. They help them to stamp out cultures of bullying, which unfortunately can exist in the workplace. They ensure that there is always a trusted third party. They ensure that people have a friend at work whom they can turn to—and everybody needs one of those at times. I really hope that the Minister will reflect on those points and respond to them.

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

Thank you, Ms McDonagh, for allowing me to speak in this very important and timely debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Faisal Rashid) on securing it and on speaking so passionately in his introductory remarks. He raised issues that resonate very strongly with me and, indeed, with the wider trade union movement across this country.

It is good to start on a positive note: trade union membership in the United Kingdom has gone up in the past year by 103,000. Now 6.35 million people are members of a trade union in the United Kingdom. However, the long-term trends still give cause for concern. Trade union membership is half of its peak in the late 1970s, when there were 12 million members of trade unions. Over that time, we have seen a 5% fall in the labour share of our economy—the share of our gross national wealth taken home by workers in wages has fallen. There is a strong correlation between the trade union organisation and collective bargaining power in our economy and the amount of wealth that workers are able to secure from the fruits of their labour.

We need to return that fundamental analysis to the heart of how we understand our economy and the relationship between working people and the owners of capital. It has been forgotten from the mainstream narrative in this country, which is about shirkers, people not working hard enough and how people need to be more flexible and sacrifice more, rather than about unity, organisation and agitation against exploitation and in favour of workers’ right to receive the fruits of their labour. The correlation is stark; it is a fact of economic history. The long-term trend in the past 40 years is a diminishing share of wealth for workers.

It would not be half as bad if that share, which workers once took home in their pay packets, was invested by companies and private capital to improve the efficiency of our economy. However, it has not been invested at all. Investment as a share of GDP has flatlined throughout that period. I wonder where that share of capital has gone. The workers are producing wealth and productivity continues to go up, but the share taken home in wages is declining. What happens to that share? It is extracted in profits by companies, which are often not based in the United Kingdom. The wealth is taken overseas, often to opaque tax havens around the world, or invested elsewhere. It is never seen by the people who produce the wealth.

That is the stark reality that we face. That is why, I would argue, having a Labour Government is so critical to restoring the collective bargaining powers in our economy, which are so essential to recapturing the share of the wealth that working people rightly deserve and produce in this country. Workers put in great innovation, productivity and effort every day in many workplaces across the United Kingdom. However, we have seen the hollowing out of their collective capacity to fight for their share of the wealth they produce.

We have seen an increase in trade union membership. Of the total UK workforce, about 23% of workers are in trade unions. However, there are regional disparities in the way trade union organisation works across the United Kingdom. Trade union membership in London and the south-east is 16% to 17% of workers, yet in Scotland, the north-west, north-east and Wales it is between 28% and 30%. There is significant regional variation. There are a number of reasons for that.

First, in areas with traditional manufacturing and labour-intensive employment, where there are large industrial employers, there seems to be more cultural recognition of trade union membership—it is an accepted fact of life. Secondly, in some regions the public sector forms a much more important share of the economy. In public sector workplaces, 52% of the workforce are trade union members, whereas in the private sector, membership is at a mere 13%. That is a huge contrast, which has evolved and become more stark in the past 40 years.

There is a significant age disparity in trade union membership, which reflects the increased casualisation of work. My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South mentioned McDonald’s employees being exploited. Many in the retail and food sectors see that happen on a daily basis. Just 4% of 16 to 24-year-olds are members of trade unions, and 77% of trade union members are over 35. The age disparity is significant and we need to tackle it.

We need to introduce information about trade unions into our education system. When I first entered work, I was exploited by employers. I undertook unpaid trial shifts. I worked minimum-wage jobs. I was denied tips. I started in a pizzeria and then worked in a supermarket. When I started working in fruit and veg at Morrisons supermarket, we had a presentation from the USDAW official. At that time, I did not really understand what a trade union was or why it would be significant to me. Why should I give up the precious little money I was paid to a trade union when I could take it home and spend it on going out and having a good time with my pals? Believe it or not, I did have a good time. Education is required on why trade union representation is important, particularly for young people for whom exploitation has never been more critical.

[Ruth George]

I am pleased to hear that my hon. Friend had a positive experience of the USDAW official. Unfortunately, I have met too many people, young and old, who started their first job in fruit and veg in a supermarket and injured their back, often for life, because of incorrect lifting practices, and who did not have trade union representation in the workplace to support them and ensure they were lifting correctly. That happens to too many young people. I hope it did not happen to my hon. Friend.

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[Ruth George]

I think the Minister will find that in practice individual workers do not have the ability to organise themselves and to join trade unions, as all the evidence presented by Opposition Members has shown. Employers frequently victimise trade union members and do not allow trade unions into the workplace to support their members, even when they are needed.

[Andrew Stephenson]

I take the hon. Lady’s point. As a constituency MP, I have come across companies whose practices I would not approve of, and I have taken the matter up with managers and been able to secure better access for trade union officials. The hon. Lady will know that workers have the right to bring a union representative to a disciplinary or grievance hearing. Unions have the right to accompany workers in such cases, even if the union is not recognised. It is fundamental that we allow unions access and that we remind workers all the time that they have that right.

[Andrew Stephenson]

I want to make progress because there were many speakers and there are lots of points to cover.

[Ruth George]

On that point, the member might have the right to be accompanied but the trade union representative does not have the right to speak in the meeting, so their presence is pointless. Does the Minister not agree that that makes the regulation fairly useless?

[Andrew Stephenson]

No, I would never describe trade union representatives as pointless. It is important that they are able to attend and support workers in grievance or disciplinary meetings. They do not have to be able to speak to support someone.

On giving practical effect to article 11 rights, let me turn to a matter that a number of hon. Members have raised: facility time for union representatives to carry out union activities. I agree that without facility time union representatives cannot carry out their trade union duties in relation to collective bargaining and related matters, and our trade union legislation provides for that. Where an independent union has been recognised by an employer for collective bargaining purposes, the employer is required to provide facility time to the union’s representatives and its members. Union representatives are entitled to paid time off to carry out their union duties as well as paid time off for training. That allows them to negotiate with the employer and carry out their functions in relation to matters covered by the collective bargaining agreement.