Unions in search of a new role in employee engagement
Employee engagement is gathering strength as a means of interacting with employees and obtaining discretionary effort. What can unions offer employers and employees in this new employee relations climate?
|
Partnership working may have produced some benefits, but it also created new tensions within trade unions and these made the relationship between employers and unions less valuable than they might have been.
Trade unions may have a part to play in employee engagement; however, many union officials are not able to cope with the demands on them, and may be deterred by management hostility.
|
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) claimed in a recent paper that the term "industrial relations" - a collective relationship between employers and employees - describes a set of employment relations that no longer widely exist, except in specific sectors and, even then, in modified form1.
The CIPD believes that union membership, down from a peak of 12 million to around 7 million today, will continue to decline, as will the proportion of workplaces that recognise unions for collective bargaining - currently about one in four of those with 10 or more employees. Unions are also being sidelined because employers want to deal with employees individually and focus their efforts on HR practices that have been shown to improve business outcomes. Engagement is at the heart of these efforts, the CIPD says, since engaged employees show commitment, make a willing contribution, help others, are absent less often and are less inclined to leave.
Failing to adjust
The challenges these developments raise were discussed in a question and answer session at the CIPD's annual conference last month, involving Jack Dromey, deputy general secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union (TGWU), Alf Turner, HR director of British Gas, and Willy Coupar, director of the Involvement and Participation Association (IPA). They agreed that unions have declined largely because they failed to adjust to changes in the world of work. Not only have they lost members as manufacturing industry has waned, but they have been unable to unionise women and young people to the extent that male workers traditionally have been.
One reason for the failure to recruit young people, Turner argued, is that they have a transitory view of employment and often do not see their current job as being part of a long-term career. If they are not planning to stay in their job long, then joining a union is an unnecessary commitment. In addition, many young people working in the private sector have never had any contact with a union and do not know what trade unions are for. Even if they work in a unionised workplace, research shows they are unlikely to be asked to join a union. As young people do not join unions in large numbers, the average age of union members is higher than the average age of employees.
Coupar observed that while there had been a steep decline in union membership in the past two decades, this has now steadied. The 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey found, for example, that the scale of the decline in membership and recognition was much smaller between 1998 and 2004 than had been seen throughout the 1980s and 1990s2. He pondered the question of whether trade union membership would stay constant at current levels, decline further, or rise again in the future. This will depend on the unions' ability to respond to the new climate of engagement and consultation and individual rights, he said.
Dromey argued that the need for trade unions had not gone away, since some groups, such as migrants, are still being "ruthlessly exploited" and unions are needed to help them obtain fair treatment. He cited a number of examples of the TGWU working across the political spectrum to help these workers, for example spearheading the campaign to ensure that gangmasters are licensed. The TGWU is also successfully targeting previously unorganised sectors such as low-cost airlines and cleaners for financial services companies in the City. The highly profitable financial organisations are being pressured to pay contractors enough to pay their employees - the cleaners - a little more than the minimum wage. The union is thus following sophisticated and diverse strategies to improve lower-paid workers' terms and conditions and, of course, recruit new members.
Partnership no longer the answer
While all three panel members acknowledged that partnership working has a lot to offer, they agreed that both unions' and employers' agendas have moved on. For British Gas, partnership has been beneficial to date, resulting in upgraded and modernised agreements and the ability to share views and problems early on so that the unions can put forward their own ideas. But coping with big issues tests partnership, and can result in union representatives being seen as colluding with management. One example was when unions at British Gas were given nine months' warning of an offshoring decision involving 1,500 back-office staff. When the decision was made public, both the local representatives and the national officer came under considerable pressure. The result was that one of the two unions involved withdrew from partnership working. Another problem for British Gas has been that while national officers understand the arguments for change and make agreements with the company, regional officials and local members can go their own way, causing questions to be asked within the organisation about the point of working with national officers.
Coupar also believes that partnership working can be problematic, opening up a gap between union officers and members who do not want their representatives sitting with management and coming up with unpalatable solutions to organisational problems. Union participation in partnership arrangements came about because falling memberships undermined unions' bargaining strength and they needed something different to offer employers and members. But the reaction of rank-and-file members to partnership has resulted in many unions moving back to a campaigning model.
Dromey said that partnership working shows that difficult issues can be dealt with by unions and management working together, but that it has become discredited by being associated with "sweetheart" deals and workplaces where the employer chooses the union. He acknowledged that union members can not succeed if their enterprise fails, and said that partnership working can be a useful way forward provided it is based on two strong parties.
For those employers that adopted it, partnership working has been an improvement on the confrontational industrial relations that often went before. But even these employers keep employee relations and employee engagement in separate compartments, since partnership to them seems to mean engaging with trade unions rather than engaging with the workforce. Research carried out for the IPA in 2004 found that where partnership working with unions is in place, and a broader agenda might be hoped for, discussions tend to be limited to HR policies and practices rather than covering issues such as customer service or quality. When it comes to improving business performance, there is increasing evidence that employers would rather deal directly with their workforce and involve, recognise and reward them on an individual basis.
What about employee engagement?
Coupar said that he would like to see employers and unions asking where their relationship fits into the employee engagement model. He believes that the union proposition for the 21st century is that people at work are entitled to a "voice", and that the unions are expert at articulating that voice. But this will never be the case, he said, while unions refuse to sit down with their non-union counterparts on works councils and information and consultation bodies. And he wanted to know what the union proposition was on performance improvement.
Dromey said that he supported a workplace culture where employees take part in continuous improvement activities and are involved in making strategic decisions.
Quality of union officers
The panel was unanimous that lay representatives are finding it hard to respond to the challenges that confront them. Turner said that the quality of both lay and national officers was higher 25 years ago than it is now, and he recalled that the first person he appointed to a management job had been a senior shop steward. Many first- and second-line managers came from that background.
The role of lay union officer has, however, changed radically. Few union reps now have the attitude that management's problems are nothing to do with them, and they both expect and are expected to engage with change and modernisation, which is arguably more difficult than thumping tables or taking industrial action, so direct comparisons with earlier generations of officials are difficult.
Union representatives face other problems too. Facilities have been withdrawn over the years, even though the job is more demanding than before, and being a union rep can be bad for an individual's career. Both Turner and Coupar said that if employers want better reps they must make it clear that the job can be a good career move and an opportunity for personal development. Since union reps are more engaged with and knowledgeable about the fortunes of the organisation than they were in the past, it is surprising that their knowledge and skills are not always recognised by employers.
This article was written by Sue Milsome, a freelance writer on employment issues, s.milsome@btopenworld.com.
1What is employee relations? (PDF format, 249K) (on CIPD website).
2Inside the workplace - findings from the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey, Kersley B et al, Routledge, 2006. See All human life is here, IRS Employment Review 855.
