The TUCs special task force report on Artificial intelligence and Employment Rights Bill was launched at the TUC Congress House in London on April 18th. Comprising of the TUC, the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge, unions academics and employment rights specialists the task force was set up to try to secure proper regulation of AI and algorithmic management in order to halt the UKs tech sector from becoming the ‘wild west’ of the economy.You can download the full report with the draft bill here.The report makes a number of key recommendations including a legal requirement on employers to consult unions on the use of ‘high risk’ and intrusive forms of AI in the workplace; a legal right for job seekers and workers to have a human review of decisions made by AI systems so they can challenge AI decisions that are unfair and discriminatory; amendments to the Equality Act to guard against discriminatory algorithms; protections against unfair dismissal by AI; a prohibition on some uses of emotion recognition technology and a right to a personalised explanation of high-risk risk decisions made by AI Workers in the UKs media, digital and tech sector, accounting for over 2 million jobs will be on the AI frontline.One of the key problems is that union membership in the tech sector remains stubbornly low in many countries, with a diverse employment base – from large corporations to small start ups – many with precarious and third party employment.From the 1980s onwards unions tried to recruit new members in tech areas by setting up specialist ‘associations’ to attract tech workers or using high profile campaigns imported from USA where ‘start up unions’ such alliance@ibm (which joined the Communication Workers of America) in global companies. What sounded good failed to achieve mass union membership after years of grinding management opposition, and ‘re-balancing the workforce’.But maybe things have turned the corner.In 2023 workers at the Swedish fin-tech company Klarna workers demanded representation and collective bargaining by joining Unionen. The company told the workforce collective bargaining ‘did not fit their business model’. The Unionen union organised immediate strike action and 5000 workers in Stockholm won union recognition and a collective agreement.In the USA workers in the video gaming company Sega of America followed Raven Software, Blizzard Albany, ZeniMax, and game developer Tender Claws in winning union recognition. AEGIS-CWA (Allied Employees Guild Improving SEGA – Communication Workers Of America) organised across Sega facilities including workers in marketing, product development and sales to build membership and making it now the largest video game union in the USA.In Romania Sindicatul IT Timișoara (SITT the Romanian IT Union) now represents 3,000 tech and outsourced workers at Alcatel-Lucent, Wipro, Accenture and Alto and were helped in organising by the European union federation Uni Europa.In the UK the CWU via the United Tech and Allied Workers Union Branch are organising workers in Apple stores; the white collar union Prospect (who’s General Secretary Mike Clancy is the TUC’s lead spokesperson on AI) has launched a tech sector and Unite’s London Digital and Tech branch has seen a membership boost since 2023.In January of this year Unite members employed at Seagate, the Springtown (Derry, Northern Ireland) manufacturer of external hard drives voted overwhelmingly for trade union recognition with Unite. 540 workers at the company were involved in multi-year campaign at the company and Unite’s organising department.The ballot followed a long battle – the statutory process for workers voting on union recognition took over a year.In the run up to the ballot, the company brought in union busters one of whom had previously been engaged by Amazon in union-busting campaigns in the USA. The company eventually negotiated a recognition agreement with Unite.James Bowen the secretary of Unite London Digital and Tech branch told me: “The branch had doubled in size over due to organising in ‘big tech’ firms such as Google. We’ve also grown at firms where we were well-established, such as Voyix and Atleos thanks to the work of our reps during pay negotiations. We are recruiting members from a diverse range of companies such as Accenture, the BBC, Cap Gemini and Computacenter.”The branch organised protests at Google at their Kings Cross HQ in London over redundancies which gained a national profile – and increased union membership. 2023 was a pivitol year with over a quarter of a million workers in tech industries globally laid off. So far in 2024 there have been lay offs at Pixar, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and TikTok among others. Microsoft’s 1,900 global layoffs which began in early 2023 has made tech workers ‘union conscious’ The fact is they are no different to other workers – they join unions for protection and representation, and to find collective and just solutions to problems.” And the good news Bowen says is “that members are keeping up their membership even when the threat of lay off’s recedes.”He says AI will be a major challenge: “AI can replace a real person and workers become concerned for their jobs. Service desk, first line roles which are heavily scripted can be replaced by an online chat bot. AI can be used to write code, reducing the number of software developers required so there are fears over job security.” And there are fears over AI discrimination: “People have biases and this impacts the many choices that are made when building and training an AI whose purpose is to make decisions which impacts people’s lives. There’s a good argument to be made that AI should not make any management decisions.”The branch are also running meetings for tech workers on AI with speakers from Equity, the performing arts and entertainment union, on the impact of AI on voice-over artists.“Clare Vernade an ex-member of ours who now teaches ‘machine learning’ has done a session and were are happy to share our experiences and the video of Clare’s presentation is available on our site. Other Unite reps have been in touch with us wanting to discuss how we are handling AI”.
Category: UK Employment Rights
UNISON win in UK Supreme Court to stop bad bosses from punishing striking workers
‘The most important industrial action case for decades”, UNISON general secretary Christina McAnea said after the Supreme Court ruled that employers cannot discipline workers who take part in legal industrial action.
Judges in the Supreme Court have told employers they’ll no longer be able to discipline their staff for taking part in legal strike action in a UK Supreme Court ruling today.
UNISON took the case on behalf of care worker Fiona Mercer. The judgment follows a two-day hearing in December.
UNISON took the case to the Supreme Court to overturn an earlier Court of Appeal decision.
The union had argued this had left the UK in breach of international law and striking employees without proper protection. The Supreme Court judges were scathing of the government’s failure to provide the minimum protection UK workers should have been granted, says UNISON.
UK law prevents employers from sacking employees who take legal strike action, but until today, it offered no protection to anyone subsequently picked upon for walking out in a dispute. Fiona had originally taken a case against her then employer, Alternative Futures Group (AFG), a charity based in the north west of England, to an employment tribunal in 2020. She had been involved in a dispute over AFG’s plans to cut payments to care staff who did sleep-in shifts.
Fiona’s employer wasn’t happy, singled her out, suspended her and barred her from going into work or contacting colleagues during the action. Fiona’s case wound up at an employment appeal tribunal (EAT) in 2021, which found in her favour. It said UK law must protect her from being victimised for going on strike. That should have been it, says UNISON, as the charity had then decided it wasn’t prepared to proceed any further.
But the then business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng intervened and took the case to the Court of Appeal, which subsequently decided to reverse the EAT decision in March 2022.
Back to where it started, UNISON sought permission on behalf of Fiona to take the case to the highest court in the land, and this led to the judgment handed down today.
UNISON general secretary Christina McAnea said: “This is the most important industrial action case for decades. It’s a victory for every employee who might one day want to challenge something bad or unfair their employer has done. “Rogue bosses won’t like it one bit. They’ll no longer be able to punish or ill-treat anyone who dares to take strike action to try to solve any problems at work.
“No one strikes on a whim. There are many legal hoops to be jumped through first. But when a worker decides to walk out, they should be able to do so, safe in the knowledge they won’t be victimised by a spiteful boss.
“The government must now close this loophole promptly. It won’t cost any money and isn’t difficult to do. Today is a day to celebrate.”
Fiona Mercer said: “I’m delighted at today’s outcome. Although it won’t change the way I was treated, it means irresponsible employers will now think twice before behaving badly towards their unhappy staff. If they single strikers out for ill-treatment, they’ll now be breaking the law.”
Barnet Council Scraps ‘Ill Advised’ Decision To Use Agency Workers To Replace Strikers.
Labour run Barnet Council has been forced to scrap plans to use agency workers from Flex 360 to replace striking mental health workers.
Barnet UNISON Mental Health social workers had received an email earlier from the Director of Adult Social Care stating that he had engaged the services of agency workers supplied by Flex 360 .
No one appears to have advised the Director of Adult Social Care that use of agency workers by an employer during industrial action is unlawful.
Last year UNISON defeated the government in the High Court over strike-breaking legislation that was introduced last summer. The High Court has ruled that the legislation which allows employers to use agency workers to replace those on strike, was unlawful, unfair, and irrational.
UNISON wrote to Barnet Council Chief Executive asking him to advise the Director of Adult Social Care to withdraw from this ill-advised course of action.
In the meantime, UNISON members who make up 95% of the workforce, is that they are furious at this crude attempt to bully and intimidate them only days before they begin nine weeks of strike action over a 13-week period.
Barnet UNISON Mental Health strikers are due to start the next phase of strike action on 15th April. Our strikers have already taken 27 days of strike action and by the end of this next phase they will have taken 72 days of strike which equates to 1,305 lost working days or 13.050 lost contacts with Mental Health service users.
“In 28 years of being a Barnet UNISON rep I have never experienced the amount of anti-union rhetoric coming from senior management. UNISON has reached out several times to offer to resolve the dispute only to be met with machismo style management which has no place in the workplace and especially a workplace which is now a Labour controlled Council.
Our UNISON family of 1.4 million members is right behind our strikers, furthermore news has just come in to say UNISON Industrial Action Committee has increased strike pay to £70 per day.
My message to the Council is stop the bullying and come back with an offer which our members would be prepared to accept.”
John Burgess, Branch Secretary, Barnet UNISON.
Labour’s New Deal For Workers Must Be Defended
By Andy McDonald MP for Middleborough
It seems there are some voices from the past who are determined in some small way, be that an email, a phone call or in a Sunday Times article, to undermine Labour’s New Deal for Working People, in some vain attempt to gain attention and be relevant.
I’m not sure it’s worth devoting any time to understanding or debating their motivation. They are simply going to have to come to terms with the fact that the policy has been repeatedly endorsed since Labour Conference 2021 by the National Policy Forum, the leader, the deputy leader and the shadow chancellor.
But perhaps even such figures from the past can reflect on the courage of the last Labour government in which they served, very much up against considerable opposition, to bring in the National Minimum Wage. They were told the economy would crash and burn, yet nothing of the sort happened, and it was a major tool in the armoury against in-work poverty in a growing economy. But we need to do more, and hence the need for the New Deal.
The reality is that the National Minimum Wage alone is not enough to defeat the scourge of in-work poverty. The world has moved on since 1997, and capitalism has evolved in ever more ingenious ways to protect capital and exploit labour. Of itself, that neoliberal obsession is ultimately self-defeating, because in failing to ensure working people enjoy secure well-paid employment, the entire basis of our economy is undermined.
We want to build a Britain where people in every part of our country, regardless of their background, can get good quality jobs that are a source of pride, provide security, treat workers fairly, and pay a proper wage to live a good life.
But we have some demons to slay if we are to achieve that.
Millions of workers have to survive on intolerable levels of insecurity in totally fragile work, be that on zero-hour contracts or bogus self-employment. This means they are unable to plan for the future, and certainly, thoughts of a decent retirement are a complete fantasy for many.
That’s why the New Deal will create a single status of worker. That will prevent unscrupulous employers from denying their staff the basic rights they are owed as employees. It will put a stop to the bad employers undercutting the good. And for those who are genuinely self-employed, their protections will be enhanced.
Back in 2022, the TUC carried out research that there were 3-6 million people in various forms of insecure work, and it remains stubbornly high. It is very much to their detriment, but the analysis shows that the Treasury takes in around £10 billion less a year from those in low-paid, bogus self-employment and on zero-hours contracts than if they had been employees.
Labour will end the one-sided flexibility of zero-hours contracts, and ensure that all contracts have a guaranteed minimum number of hours. Anyone working regular hours for 12 weeks or more will gain the right to a regular contract to reflect the hours normally worked.
And the abominable practice of fire and rehire will be tackled head-on once and for all, as will the disgraceful tactic of fire and replace. If anything exemplifies the need for reform it is the vision of Peter Hebblethwaite, the boss of P&O Ferries, before the business and trade select committee upon which I serve in 2022.
In that evidence session, he had the audacity to tell us that he deliberately broke the law, and simply priced it into the cost of doing business, when he illegally sacked 800 workers by Zoom and replaced them with slave-wage workers from overseas with absolutely no consequence for him personally or his company.
That can never be allowed to happen again and the New Deal will put an end to that.
But none of this will mean anything unless we firstly have trade unions free to do their jobs and bargain for their members, and secondly, we have an effective regime for the enforcement of employment laws.
Again, the New Deal will achieve exactly that by lifting the burdens from trade unions to represent their members fully, and by the creation of a properly funded single enforcement body.
Now think back to how Boris Johnson clapped our key workers during the pandemic outside Number 10. Meaningless guff.
Starting with care workers, Labour will deliver them the security of a Fair Pay Agreement. That will provide a national floor of terms and conditions upon which trade unions can then collectively bargain. It will put an end to those responsible and good companies being undercut.
With the ever-increasing social care demands and the vacancies in the sector, it’s an absolutely necessary step to take and those workers are deserving of respect and dignity at work which includes a proper rate for the job.
I was honoured to have been asked as shadow secretary of state to lead Labour’s employment rights task force, working with our 12 affiliate unions and many others, which resulted in the production of the New Deal for Working People.
I am convinced that its full implementation will be the singular most transformative policy of the incoming Labour government. That has to be our focus.
Andy McDonald is MP for Middlesbrough — follow him on X @AndyMcDonaldMP. First published in the Morning Star on April 6th.