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Better Jobs – the Added Value from Trade Unions – Case Studies of the Impact of Collective Bargaining

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Better Jobs – the Added Value from Trade Unions – Case Studies of the Impact of Collective Bargaining Better Jobs – the added value from trade unions – case studies of the impact of Collective Bargaining Research for the TUC Sian Moore and Bethania Mendes De Brito Antunes Work and Employment Research Unit (WERU) University of Greenwich February 2018 Acknowledgements The authors would like to convey their enormous gratitude to all those who spared time to be interviewed for this research and who have made this report possible. Thanks go to Carl Roper for his support for the project and to the TUC for funding the research. The Authors Professor Sian Moore is Director of the Work and Employment Research Unit at the University of Greenwich. Her research centres on the relationship between gender and class. She has published on trade union activism, statutory trade union recognition, trade union learning and equality reps and more recently on non-standard contracts in homecare and parcel delivery. Dr Bethania Antunes is a Senior Lecturer in Reward Management at University of Greenwich and an active member of the Work and Employment Research Unit (WERU). Prior to this she was a Teaching Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) where completed her PhD in Employment Relations and Organisational Behaviour in 2013. Her research interests include non- profit organizations, performance-related pay, intrinsic motivation and performance as well as public service motivation. Contents Summary ......................................................................................................................................................... 1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................... 2 Research Methods .......................................................................................................................................... 4 Table 1: Case Study respondents .................................................................................................................... 4 Key Themes ..................................................................................................................................................... 5 1. The Collective Bargaining relationship ................................................................................................... 5 2. Working time, Unsocial hours and Work-life balance ........................................................................... 6 3. Non-Standard Contracts ......................................................................................................................... 8 4. Pay and the Living Wage ......................................................................................................................... 9 5. Equal Pay ............................................................................................................................................... 10 6. Performance Related Pay ..................................................................................................................... 10 7. Holiday and Sick Pay and Parental Leave ............................................................................................. 11 8. Addressing the Two-tier Workforce ..................................................................................................... 11 9. Learning and Skills, Career Progression and Job Design ...................................................................... 11 10. The Role of Workplace Reps ................................................................................................................. 12 11. Advocating for non-members .............................................................................................................. 13 12. Recruitment and Organisation ............................................................................................................. 14 13. The Employers and Collective Bargaining – real employee engagement ........................................... 14 Conclusions ........................................................................................................................................... 15 Annex 1: The Case Studies Case Study 1: PCS and Performance Management at the Ministry of Defence ......................................... 16 Case Study 2: BECTU, freelance workers and the UK Independent Television Drama Agreement ........... 19 Case Study 3: CWU and Openreach Engineering Career Pathways ............................................................ 22 Case Study 4: Unite and the 35-hour week at Bentley ................................................................................ 25 Case Study 5: Prospect and Equal Pay at the Met Office ............................................................................ 28 Case Study 6: The FBU’s Personal Fitness Qualification .............................................................................. 31 Case Study 7: BFAWU and Warburtons ....................................................................................................... 34 Case Study 8: NEU and the Delta Academies Trust ..................................................................................... 37 Case Study 9: UNISON and shift patterns at Veolia ..................................................................................... 40 Case Study 10: The GMB and the Living Wage at Cardiff Airport ............................................................... 43 Summary The research is based upon ten in-depth case studies where collective bargaining has delivered concrete outcomes for workers, particularly in terms of job quality, working hours and work-life balance. In all cases they highlight the positive outcomes of collective bargaining in workplaces with high union membership and active workplace reps: • Four of the case studies see the establishment of new collective bargaining relationships, possibly addressing the legacy of periods of deregulated industrial relations and reflecting a renewed logic for joint regulation. • A number of the cases studies involve negotiated agreements over working time, including the first 35 hour working week in the automotive industry at Bentley, a guaranteed maximum 35-hours week at Warburtons in the food sector, and a reduction in the working day and week from 40 hours to 37.5 in a recycling plant managed by Veolia. These reductions are in return for flexibility over working time, but requirements to work extra hours are based on adequate notice and premia. • Across the case studies collective bargaining protects the notion of ‘unsocial hours’, including overtime, and compensates workers for these hours. It thus defends work-life balance against the tendency towards ‘on-demand’ working that has characterised the increase in non-standard contracts. In one case negotiations led to the abandonment of changes to shift patters that would have undermined the precarious work and care arrangements, and thus constrained choices, of workers. • Collective bargaining agreements ensure hours beyond the standard working day, including for part- time workers, are scheduled and planned in advance and adequately compensated. In one case study this involved the replacement of zero-hours contracts with fixed hours, thus increasing the predictability of working hours. • In three of the case studies collective bargaining involved members on non-standard contracts. These included the removal of zero-hour contracts, the conversion of agency workers to permanent and the introduction of full statements of terms and conditions for freelance (self-employed) workers in Bectu’s agreement covering TV drama. • While pay for workers in UK has generally stagnated, at Bentley Unite negotiated an above average pay rise over three years and here and at Cardiff Airport unions cited Brexit as a motivation for long- term deals that give workers security beyond 2019. • Collective bargaining addresses low pay, including a commitment to pay the Living Wage Foundation’s voluntary Living Wage at Cardiff Airport regardless of age. • At the Met Office the union has negotiated a new pay and grading system tackling equal pay in a government agency where the impact of the Government’s pay freeze on the gender pay gap had been exposed. Collective bargaining delivered a significant pay increase to women trapped on lower grades. • Collective bargaining at the Ministry of Defence has pushed back on performance related pay systems in government agencies based upon forced distributions, where a fixed proportion of the workforce are deemed unsatisfactory with implications for their job security. At Delta schools academy chain 1 appraisal processes have been standardised ensuring that informal observation cannot be used as part of the appraisal process. In other cases individual performance management systems have been replaced by team based performance or are now based upon quality rather than production and profit. • Two agreements reflected recent legal clarifications that holiday pay should be based upon normal pay, including premia. There were improvements to holidays in two cases and in one of these also enhanced sick pay. • Three agreements addressed a two-tier workforce, where as the result of contracting out or the recruitment of employees on new contracts, employees working alongside each other have been on different terms and conditions. • Collective bargaining is delivering significant initiatives on learning and skills. A Personal
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