Category: UK Employment Rights

Following weeks of wrangling over revised wording contained in Labour’s New Deal For Workers document and pressure from employers and the CBI Sir Keir Starmer and TULO unions (unions affiliated to the Labour Party) have agreed the following statement:

“Together we have reiterated Labour’s full commitment to the ‘New deal for working people’ as agreed in July. We will continue to work together at pace on how a Labour government would implement it in legislation.”

It means the deal agreed at the National Policy Forum in July last year which some unions argue already represented a “watering down” of several of the original proposals, is now the party’s agreed position.

Unions say that there were concerns about the draft Labour document extended beyond the NPF deal.

Some senior Labour figures had also expressed concern about the leaking of an internal draft to the media in an attempt to bounce the unions into further changes.

Union General Secretaries met for 2 hours in advance of the meeting with Starmer, deputy leader, Angela Rayner, shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, party chair, Anneliese Dodds, and shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Darren Jones. The meeting with Labour lasted 3 hours.

TULO unions had raised concerns about the leaked draft of a document that included several changes to the proposals, including the speed and methods of the changes.

TULO unions presented a united front with Labour and Starmer was told he should agree to return to language used in NPF document with no further ‘watering down”.

According to the Guardian a union source said: “We believed that the party had agreed all of these measures with us at the national policy forum last summer,” one union source said. “We are trade unionists and we know when we make an agreement – we don’t expect to be then given a different draft months later and be told, actually this is what’s going to happen.”

Another union official said: “There are those who want to make their case publicly, but the concerns are shared privately by most unions. It’s not only about consultations, which is how the Labour party have tried to frame this; there are promises that were made, such as on sick pay, which have gone completely.”

Dave Ward General Secretary of the CWU said: the meeting was a “positive” and “good” one.

“We have reached an agreement in terms of the full new deal, will be implemented as we agreed previously. Keir’s made it very clear how transformational that will be for working people. “We’ve got the position we all want, Labour, working people, this will be the biggest difference in rights the country has ever seen in decades, it will be a flagship policy for the general election. The full new deal will be implemented… we’ve got the position we all want… we need to shift the balance of forces in the world of work, back towards working people”

“We need to shift the balance of forces in the world of work, back towards working people, that’s the only way you’re going to grow the economy.” 

Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham one of the fiercest critics of the Labour Party revised document said: “The workers’ voice was heard today. My Job is to defend workers. Labour  have listened. The words on the page will now matter. We have to hold their feet to the fire… we’re not a cult.”

Matt Wrack the General Secretary of the Firefighters union the FBU and this years president of the TUC and a strong critic of the revised draft trailed in the media in recent weeks said: “There’s going to be a debate about policies are implemented… there’s always people with different views… the question now is how that is implemented.”

For information.

Matt Wrack General Secretary of the FBU and President of the TUC, Paul Nowak TUC General Secretary, Sharon Graham of Unite push back on ‘changes’ to New Deal For Workers.

Labour will face a “hostile reaction” from unions if the UK opposition party announces a further dilution of its proposed worker’s rights policy, the president of the Trades Union Congress Matt Wrack told the FT.

The General Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union, told the Financial Times there should be “no rolling back” of Labour’s “New Deal for Working People”. “My message is very clear, no rolling back . . . if there is any more rolling back on the New Deal, they can expect a hostile reaction to it,” he said.

“People are not willing to just give up on this or retreat simply because Labour is the only show in town.” Wrack issued his warning after the Financial Times revealed on Wednesday that Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party is set to unveil a weakened version of its employee rights package to ease business concerns.

Sharon Graham, General Secretary of Unite the Union, warned Labour that it needed to move quickly on Britain’s sub-standard employment rights. “If Labour do not explicitly recommit to what they have already pledged, namely that the New Deal for Workers will be delivered in full within the first 100 days of office, then a red line will be crossed,” she said.

“It would be normal, and often a legal requirement, for a government to have statutory consultation on its new legislation. The current government has often failed to consult and has been dragged through courts as a result,” said Paul Nowak, General Secretary of the TUC.

He added: “The unions expect Labour to deliver this programme.”

Mick Lynch, RMT General Secretary said: “Any dilution of the New Deal for workers is wholly unacceptable. Labour must not bend the knee to corporate greed and instead find its voice and values by representing the interests of working people in government.

“The New Deal for workers is popular amongst trades unionists and is an asset at the ballot box. “Working people need a Labour government that will protect them from the excesses of business, not one that kowtows to the vested interests of the super-rich.

“Any attempt to water down this popular policy will be met with a robust response from the entire trade union movement.”

FT comment: Shadow ministers are now set to embark on an attempt to persuade trade union leaders to accept the revised package, with a meeting scheduled for two weeks’ time, according to Labour and union figures.

They will argue that despite the consultations and revised language the essence of the package is broadly the same as before, they said.

Starmer earlier this week during the Usdaw union conference in Blackpool said: “We will not be watering down the New Deal For Working People.”

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”.