22.3% of UK employees are trade union members, but how do trade unions work and what are the benefits of joining one?
An Overview of Trade Unions
A trade union is an organisation made up of people who tend to be workers or employees who have joined together to help maintain and improve their employment conditions. Trade unions speak out on behalf of their members, looking out for their members’ best interests to ensure:
Safe working conditions
Protection from workplace bullying or discrimination
Legal protection, where staff are treated in accordance to law
They do a variety of things, such as:
Discuss major changes like redundancy
Negotiate things like staff pay and pension benefits
Accompany members to disciplinary and grievance meetings
Provide information and guidance on work-related problems
Provide legal and financial advice
Help develop skills for members to gain better-paid jobs via training and education programmes
Unions put pressure on employers to take positive action, such as raising wages, as they are a group of people working as a collective force rather than as individuals that can be far more easily ignored.
In fact, union members in the UK receive, on average, 12.5% better pay than non-union members as well as better sickness and pension benefits, more holiday, and more flexible working hours.
Unions have brought significant positive change to UK employees, including a national minimum wage, equality legislation, reduced hours in the working week, minimum holiday and sickness entitlement, and many more transformations.
Joining a Trade Union
You can use the Trades Union Congress’ union finder to find a union for you.
If your work has a trade union, you can speak to the trade union representative about joining. You might be able to find their contact information on the work intranet, union noticeboard, or company handbook.
Workplaces in different sectors have recognised trade unions they choose to work with so you may wish to ask your employer which one they recognise. You can choose to join a different trade union to this one, but this may mean your union has less say in any issues affecting you in the workplace.
You have the right to:
Join or not join a trade union
Leave or remain in a trade union
Belong to a union of your choice, even if it isn’t the one your employer negotiates with on pay and conditions
Belong to more than one union
When you are part of a trade union, you will pay a membership fee to help fund the union’s work. Depending on your union, this will either be dependent on your salary or wage, or the same for every member regardless of pay.
by Red Star Wealth
Over recent years, more and more individuals have turned to the gig economy for work.
Definition Difficulties
In its most simple terms, the gig economy is where independent contractors or freelancers get paid for the ‘gigs’ or tasks they do, such as performing a delivery, rather than being paid a regular wage. Creating a more in-depth and accurate definition has proven somewhat difficult…
“The gig economy involves the exchange of labour for money between individuals or companies via digital platforms that actively facilitate matching between providers and customers, on a short-term and payment by task basis.”
“The term ‘gig economy’ has become synonymous with internet apps connecting customers with service providers. But the gig economy is much broader than this narrow definition, and it existed long before we ordered food or booked a manicure via apps on our smartphones. […The gig economy] is the process by which companies act as an intermediary between a customer and a person providing the service.”
This helps to highlight the difficulty of coming up with an accurate definition of the gig economy which everyone can agree upon. This leads us to the difficulty of deciding how to view and treat the gig economy; if it is this hard to reach an agreement on its very definition, how can we reach agreement on whether it is more flexible or exploitative, or whether these gig workers should be given full employment rights or left as they are?
The Flexibility of the Gig Economy
One of the main draws of gig work is the flexibility that comes with it. Gig workers have the right to pick and choose what work they take on. They have control over how much they work and when. This may allow gig workers to fit their work around their lives rather than fitting their lives around work.
This said, flexibility is not always a good thing. With flexibility comes irregularity: irregular working patterns, irregular hours and irregular pay. Workers won’t be earning a set amount of money every week, or month, making it harder to achieve financial stability.
Employers only have to pay workers when work is actually available, rather than paying continuous staffing costs even when the demand for their products or services is not there. This is good from an employer perspective, but here we can see that irregularity coming in for the gig workers: work is not a given.
Lack of Employment Rights
Gig economy workers are usually classed as independent contractors rather than workers.
Above is an extract taken from the government website regarding employment status and rights in Great Britain. Here, gig workers usually fall into the latter category of self-employed individuals who have no employment rights.
Therefore, gig workers often don’t have access to employment rights, such as (but not confined to):
Minimum wage… BEIS’s NatCen Panel in 2017 found 25% of those involved in gig economy work reported earning less than the national minimum wage for over 25s at the time of the survey
Protection from wrongful dismissal
Right to redundancy
Sick pay
Holiday pay
Paid parental leave
Supreme Court’s Ruling Against Uber
On 19th February 2021, the UK’s Supreme Court ruled that Uber must treat its drivers as workers rather than self-employed, meaning many are now entitled to minimum wage and holiday pay.
The court ruled that Uber must consider its drivers as workers from the moment they log on the app until the moment they log off.
BEIS’s NatCen Panel in 2017 found that Uber was the most commonly used platform by gig economy workers, with 18% having provided services via the app. This emphasises how huge a step this Supreme Court decision is in the way of gig workers gaining more employment rights, given the extent to which Uber uses gig workers to deliver its services.
What is the Extent of the Gig Economy?
So then, what is the extent of the gig economy? Just how popular is it?
In their 2018 report (using NatCen Panel data from 2017), BEIS estimated that around 4.4% of the Great British population had worked in the gig economy within the last 12 months, working out at around 2.8 million people.
Research commissioned by TUC in November 2021, carried out by the University of Hertfordshire with fieldwork and data collection conducted by Britain Thinks, found that around 14.7% of people in England and Wales work for gig economy platforms at least once a week. This is equivalent to 4.4 million people, which when compared to their previous figures, has almost tripled over the last 5 years.
Overall, the gig economy provides great flexibility but comes with a lack of employment rights, and it seems that a more concrete definition of different types of employment and what individuals are entitled to under each is required.
by Red Star Wealth
Government plans for a new law on minimum service levels during industrial action could leave workers being denied their right to strike.
Waves of Strikes
There is a seemingly constant wave of strikes recently due to huge hikes in inflation without adequate wage increases to match. This is causing huge amounts of disruption for the UK public, which can certainly be frustrating, but that is the point of strikes!
If we can recognise that these workers striking is causing this much disruption, we can also recognise how much we rely on their service. If we need their services this much to go about our daily lives, surely we can also understand why they deserve to be fairly paid.
If we take nurses as an example, their average pay has failed to increase in line with inflation or with private sector wage increases for over a decade, meaning real wage decreases over time. Over the course of a year between 2021 and 2022 in England, 1 in 9 nurses left active service. We need to ask ourselves why, and the answer seems quite clear… why would people want to work somewhere heavily understaffed, where they are overworked and underpaid?
Since June 2022, many workers have undergone strikes, including (but not limited to) the following professions:
Rail employees
Civil servants
Nurses
University staff
Border force staff
Ambulance workers
Midwives
Postal workers
Physiotherapists
The Strikes Bill
The Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1992 has protected employee rights for decades and this protection is now at a real risk of erosion. The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill would amend the 1992 Act to “enable employers to issue work notices to require the minimum service levels to be delivered for particular strikes in specified services.”
The Union would then be expected to take reasonable steps to ensure the compliance of their members, and if failing to do so, would face paying huge damages. The Bill would essentially force Unions to go against the best interests of their members.
Its Implications
The Strikes Bill has now been passed in the House of Commons (315 votes to 246). It now needs to pass through the House of Lords to come into force.
Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, has claimed that Labour, and others in opposition, are “putting lives at risk” by planning to vote against this bill.
However, many have criticised it for removing workers’ rights. If the bill passes, hundreds of thousands of people working in the public sector will be unable to exercise their right to strike. This means that many who have democratically and legally voted for strike action will be required to work during periods of industrial action, and face being sacked if they fail to comply.
The Trades Union Congress have described the bill as a “draconian piece of legislation” and that “forcing unions to send their members across picket lines is a significant infringement of their freedoms.”
UNISON assistant general secretary, Jon Richards, has described it as “a bill that gives all powers to the government and infringes workers’ rights, undermines democracy and doesn’t allow proper oversight by Parliament.”
If you enjoyed reading this blog, you might enjoy our previous post discussing the Government’s new statutory code on ‘fire and rehire’ practices.
by Red Star Wealth
The Government’s new statutory code on ‘fire and rehire’ practices falls short of properly protecting workers.
What is Fire and Rehire?
Fire and rehire is a practice wherein an employer dismisses an employee and rehires them on new terms, which are usually less favourable.
The New Statutory Code
On 24th January, the government announced that they were cracking down on employers using fire and rehire practices.
This new statutory code is intended to make it clear to employers that they aren’t allowed to threaten their staff with dismissal to pressure them into accepting less favourable terms. The code would also apply when employers attempt to replace their workers with new staff on worse terms.
Once this code is implemented, Courts and Employment Tribunals will be able to take it into account when considering relevant cases, including those regarding wrongful dismissal. If an employer is found to flout this code, they will have the power to increase the relevant employee’s compensation by 25% in certain cases.
P&O Ferries Scandal
Last year, P&O Ferries sacked 786 seafarers without prior consultation, with a plan of replacing them with cheaper agency workers.
Chief executive, Peter Hebblethwaite, admitted the company had broken the law with their actions due to their failure to consult trade unions in good time before the sackings, instead choosing to make the workers redundant with immediate effect.
Criticism
This code falls short of the outright ban on fire and rehire practices that many unions have called for. The Trade Union Congress general secretary said “A general code of practice is not going to stop another P&O-style scandal from happening, and it won’t deter bad bosses from treating staff like disposable labour”
Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, commented, “This code isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. It’s shameful that nearly a year after the P&O Ferries scandal the Conservatives can only offer this weak half-measure, which they admit will allow fire-and-rehire tactics to continue”
Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite the Union described it as “an insult to workers and their families” and called on the government to ban fire and rehire practices for good.
This isn’t a New Issue…
The P&O Ferries scandal is certainly not the first of its kind. In April 2021, hundreds of British Gas engineers were sacked after refusing to sign up to new terms and conditions which would have seen them working longer hours and facing a pay cut.
Following this issue, a Survation poll was conducted on behalf of GMB, which found that 76% of those who answered believed that the practice of fire and rehire should be illegal. This included 71% of Conservative voters. Therefore, it is certainly not just criticisers of the Tory party who want workers to have protection from what is, quite frankly, an exploitative labour practice.
A Consultation is taking place over the 12 weeks following this announcement on 24th January. Here, the public and interested groups can share their views on a new statutory code for employers. You can take part by clicking here.
