While chief executives seem to manage to get huge sums of compensation when they are sacked or resign after screwing up, us lesser mortals have only been able to look on with envy. However when we are sacked unfairly we have at least been able to rely on our unions and, as a last resort, an Employment Tribunal. The government wants to either stop that or make it more expensive. As well as changing the time you have to have been working for your employer to be able to make a claim to an Employment Tribunal from one year to two years they plan to charge us for the pleasure of seeking any form of justice.  Applicants will be obliged to pay the costs of an unfair dismissal claim which will only be refunded if the employee wins.

The government is proposing to charge £200 to lodge a claim and £1000 for a  hearing, They have given another option of an upfront fee of £500 to access the Tribunal that can rise to £1750 if the employee is claiming more than £30,000 in compensation. The fees will be even higher if a worker believed they were sacked because of their sex, race, disability, age, sexual orientation or religion and belief.

At the same time they are trying to prevent us claiming compensation if we are injured or made ill through work caused by the employers’ negligence.

Under proposals going through Parliament at the moment, union members will be among the millions who are deprived of the ability to claim compensation, or who will lose damages.  As many as 25% of injury claims will not be brought.  Those that proceed might lose up to 25% of damages for the success fee and further substantial reductions for required legal expense insurance.

Many people will no longer be able to obtain representation, particularly for low value/complex cases. However although a claim of £3,000 or £4,000 may be considered to be low value by the Government, it is not low value to a cleaner who earns £6 an hour and represents four months wages.

Finally they are proposing to slash the payments that you can get under the criminal injuries compensation scheme. These payments are certainly not huge – often around a thousand pounds, but they can go to shop workers or security staff who are assaulted. Tube workers who have had to cope with the trauma of a suicide jumping in front of their train have also benefited.

That is now to change. In a consultation document issued this week the Government says it wants to remove around 17,000 victims of violence crime every year from the scheme including those with injuries like a smashed hand or an injury to the knee that is serious enough to require surgery.  In addition many of those who still qualify will find the compensation cut, so even people with minor brain damage face a cut in their payments.

It is not a coincidence that all these proposals are coming together. The government has been wound up about a non-existent compensation culture by insurance companies who are happy to take insurance premiums but have taken a series of court cases to try to stop them paying out when things go wrong, including several aimed at asbestos victims. The coalition government is also hell-bent of removing as many employment rights as it can, so expect more to come.

The federation claims to have organised a phenomenal 2 million workers into 200 unions in barely a year. Of course, many of the new independent unions have their roots in the underground workers’ struggles throughout the past decade. And without clear ways to keep membership records, the total figure may be in doubt, but as an accurate figure emerges it will still be the single most impressive organising effort I’ve ever come across (And this is just one of the two new independent federations: the Egyptian Democratic Labour Congress (EDLC) claims to have signed up 214 unions with a seven figure combined membership also).

Legitimacy means everything to this nascent movement. So long denied a voice in the workplace and a voice in society, they are determined to be democratic and everywhere. “We bid farewell to land-lord run unions” of Mubarak, said Kamal Abou Aita, the acting President of EFITU.

And they did so in meticulous-style: each of the 264 delegates would vote, one-by-one, walking up onto the congress stage, showing their ID, filing out their ballot and putting it in a large glass box for the entire hall to see. “How powerful is that?” I thought after the first few votes. “How long will this take?” I thought after three hours and only 140 delegates in. More hours passed and I realised that these guys have pyramid-building patience and that I’d nodded off and drooled a bit.

But by then the party had set in. Us international guests filed some dead air time by firing off our best platitudes from the podium. I took the liberty to pass on your solidarity, and then joined in a few chants that I didn’t understand. By the time I left the congress in the wee hours the votes for the finance committee were only just rolling in.

What about the role of women in this new Egyptian union movement I hear you ask? Sure they were at the forefront of the revolution but early photos I saw of this new union movement showed a room full of men, straining the definition of middle-aged.

But today’s congress showed progress and promise. “It fills us with pride that the youth represent the vast majority of our union organisation, and that women play a pivotal role in our union,” said Abou Aita. And I could see that he wasn’t wrong.  Further, it was these delegates that moved an amendment to EFITU’s constitution to put in place a 25 per cent quota for women. No mean feat in this part of the world.

But the journey for women’s empowerment in Egypt will be a long one. Take this sobering passage from the ILO’s latest global employment trends report on Egypt, Libya and Tunisa (page 75):

The unemployment rate for young people in the region was 27.1 per cent in 2011, the rate for women stood at 19.0 per cent and young women faced an unemployment rate of 41.0 per cent.

Even where they have a job, “female workers and those in the private sector work in slave-like conditions”, concluded Kamal Abbass, the acting leader of the EDLC, after describing the extreme overtime, poverty wages and high levels of harassment they face. With British business sourcing from these export zones of “slave-like conditions”, we need to play our role.

The new unions are still very much workplace based, yet to make connections with those in the same sector, or region, but the links are emerging.  But workshop sessions throughout the week are pulling together key workers in the same sector, their respective global sectoral union federations helping with the speed-merger-dating.

And bizarrely, it got exciting: “We have formed 23 committees! And I’m on the fishing committee!”, yelled out one speaker to thunderous applause and more infectious chants that I didn’t understand. I wished I was on the fishing committee.

These workers are from workplaces across Egypt. I spoke with welders, justice ministry workers, bus drivers, teachers, farmers, postal workers, and nurses. Abou Aita also spoke proudly of the vulnerable – “peasants, casual workers, informal economy workers and street vendors” – swelling their ranks.

What impressed me greatly is that these folks aren’t waiting for some legislative silver bullet to deliver a union movement to them. They are going out there and making it under laws that haven’t changed since Hosni Mubarak owned the country.

And it’s tough. Most of them don’t have offices, and are barred from opening bank accounts. All of them face workplaces where the official stooge unions of the old regime are still collecting compulsory dues against the wishes of the workforce. To join a real union in Egypt you have to pay double.

Further, the new government may be dominated by Islamic parties that swept the recent elections, and a new law on trade union freedoms is yet to be enacted. But these won’t stop this chanting hall of workers whose time has come. They’ve already sunk their roots too deep.

The House of Lords are to start discussing proposed changes to the Government’s Health and Social Care Bill on 8 February. The seriousness of this Bill cannot be understated. It threatens the very principles on which the National Health Service was founded by turning it into a business where our taxes will pay for private companies to provide our healthcare. Profit will come before patient care. These reforms are being pushed through at a time when the government is asking the NHS to make unprecedented cuts. Despite Government assertions to the contrary, deep concerns about the Bill are held by practitioners and patients from across the health service.  They are also shared by many of the coalitions own supporters, including a number of MPs and Peers, who have criticised what Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary is trying to push through.

Now we are asking anyone who cares about our NHS to join us in a Save our NHS rally in Westminster Central Hall, opposite the Houses of Parliament at 18:00 on 7 March. The rally has been organised by the All Together for the NHS Campaign and brings together a range of unions, professional bodies, patients and members of the public who are opposed to the Bill.

Some changes have been made to the Bill but not nearly enough. Among the proposals still in the Bill will be the extension of competition and markets within the NHS. The private sector will also be able to take over the organising and delivery of NHS services. Only this week we have seen a private company taking over an NHS hospital for the first time, as Circle moves in to the Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire. This will be the future the NHS has to look forward to if the Bill stays in its current form.

NHS hospitals will now be able to get as much as 49% of their income from private patients. As I covered in an earlier blog for Touchstone, this will mean that NHS patients are pushed to the back of the queue in favour of private patients who can pay. There is no doubt that patient care will suffer  while health inequalities and care postcode lotteries are likely to rise.

The cost of the re-organisation is estimated at £3 billion a year and is rising by £1 million a day. This is at a time when the NHS is already being asked to make huge cuts.

The Bill is back in the House of Lords on 8 February for a number of weeks before it returns to the House of Commons for MPs to debate again. The pressure on Andrew Lansley, has been growing in recent weeks with more professional bodies joining the calls to significantly amend or withdraw the bill altogether. The rally is intended to add to that pressure by demonstrating the broad coalition of opposition to bill.

Peers must listen to the concerns of the people that know the NHS best – the staff who work in it. Health workers fear the increased competition and the extension of markets will have a devastating impact on patient care, especially poorer people who will find themselves pushed to the back of ever-growing waiting lists.

We hope the rally on7 March will provide the opportunity for NHS workers and patients to send a loud message across Parliament Square to convince the House of Lords that this Bill would be a disaster for the NHS.

The AFLCIO reported that:

“Overall union membership increased by 49,000 from 2010 to 2011, including 15,000 new 16- to 24-year-old members, according to new U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data out this morning. An increase of 110,000 in the private sector was partially offset by a decline of  61,000 in the public sector, making the rate of union membership essentially unchanged at 11.8 percent, with some 14.8 million U.S. workers union members. Public-sector density increased from 36.2 percent to 37 percent though November 2011. Private-sector union membership remains at 6.9 percent. The largest increases in union membership were in construction, health care services, retail trade, primary metals and fabricated metal products, hospitals, transportation and warehousing.”

Workers in education, training, and library occupations had the highest unionization rate, at 36.8 percent, while the lowest rate occurred in sales and related occupations (3.0 percent). Among states, New York continued to have the highest union membership rate (24.1 percent) and North Carolina again had the lowest rate (2.9 percent). In 2011, among full-time wage and salary workers, union members had median usual weekly earnings of $938, while those who were not union members had median weekly earnings of $729.

In 1983, the first year for which comparable union  data are available, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent and there were 17.7 million union workers.

Despite significant and ongoing job losses in the public sector, union action on pensions – coupled  with a generally raised profile as unions have shown a lead against the government’s damaging austerity programme – has meant that membership appears to be holding steady and in some cases growing. But this is just one one small silver lining in what looks like an increasingly gloomy outlook for our members and their families. Union membership is not just an end in itself. Workers don’t organise for the sake of holding a union card: they organise to help protect their jobs; to ensure they get paid decently; to have access to pensions; to work somewhere that’s safe and healthy; to get a voice on the job; and to develop new skills and build their careers. There’s no doubt that delivering on all these points and more has got harder and harder. Even successful, highly profitable employers appear to be using the current economic crisis as cover cutting back on jobs, pay and pensions (see here and here for current and obvious examples).

It would be easy in this climate to seek solace in counsels of despair. But that’s not my style, and my guess is that if you are reading this blog, it’s not yours either. So I thought it was right to point out that despite all the difficulties, there is plenty of evidence that unions are still in there fighting, and most importantly winning for members. Here’s two very different private sector examples of what I mean.

Most of us grew up with Woolworths. Its record department and pick ‘n’ mix were the stuff of childhood legend, which is why so  many of us were shocked when over 800 Woolworth shops and outlets shut their doors at the end of 2008. But it wasn’t just memories that were lost when Woolies closed down – nearly 30,000 people lost their jobs when the company’s administrator pulled the plug. Since then USDAW has been trying to secure at least some justice for those thrown out of work – a long and protracted battle which finally resulted in this week’s news that 24,000 former Woolworth’s staff will share some £68m in compensation, awarded by a Tribunal who ruled that the administrator should have properly consulted USDAW before making redundancies. That’s £68million pound going back into the pockets of thousands of former Woolies staff – and just as importantly, a very clear message sent out to employers and administrators that unions won’t stand by and watch members get diddled out of what little legal protection they have. Without USDAW I think you can safely assume the likelihood of those staff receiving a single penny in compensation would have been close to zero.

The other case I thought I’d highlight shows that unions are not just about helping members when things go wrong, or reacting to closures and redundancies. They can also be on the front foot. RMT have notched up a number of notable victories over the last few months (and as a regular user of Virgin Trains I was particularly pleased with this pay award for contract cleaners on Branson’s West Coast Mainline routes), but the thing that really caught my eye was the news that the union had managed to secure a Olympics paydeal worth some £2,500 for staff on the Docklands Light Railway. A one-off deal for a one-off event? Hard to replicate elsewhere? Maybe… but it’s a win that owes a lot to strong union organisation, and shows what unions can do to buck the prevailing pay trend.   With average wage settlements bumping along at around 2%, and unions looking for ways to reverse the three decade long assault on pay, its a good reminder that below inflation pay-rises are neither pre-ordained or inevitable.

At a time when tens of thousands of union members face the prospect of losing their jobs, and are struggling to make ends meet, I’m reluctant to reach for pat assurances that all is well. Of course, all is not well. 2011 was a tough year for unions and their members. 2012 looks like being tougher still. But that makes it even more important that we take heart from – and celebrate – each and every success we have.

The two examples I’ve highlighted above show two very different unions in very different circumstances, who despite all the challenges have managed to tip the balance back a little bit towards their members. These aren’t one-offs. The same is happening in workplaces, both public and private, up and down the country. David is winning more often than we sometimes think. I reckon that something that’s got to be worth shouting about – and if you do too, tell us about your wins at @strongerunions

Burma has long been a labour rights hellhole: rampant forced labour, banned unions and jails full of activists – all reasons why the EU has long maintained economic sanctions against the regime.

But things might be changing. A year ago, there were an estimated 54 trade unionist and labour activists behind bars. Now we think there are only half a dozen left.

Yet the tide of change has only reached so far. While it has been widely reported that the government has eased restrictions on trade unions, it hasn’t yet. Despite passing a Labour Organisations Law (And yes, let’s shorten that to “LOL”), in October last year, the government still hasn’t implemented it. Several unions have tried to register under the LOL but have been turned away by a government, that insiders say is desperately trying to form its own puppet unions.

The Federation of Trade Unions – Burma (FTUB), forced to operate in exile is still dubbed a terrorist organisation. For the new law to have any credibility this has to change.

According to the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the LOL itself, written without any input from unions, is “…so ambiguously drafted in key places, so lacking in critical detail and so disconnected from surrounding law…” that its benefits to workers are in doubt. Further, the law gives government officials far too much power to decide which unions can register, what collective bargaining can actually occur and what strikes or other actions are permissible.

And even if the law was better drafted, it can easily be overridden by laws providing for “law and order, community peace and tranquillity,” according to the constitution drafted by the Generals. And old repressive decrees still remain in force. Nevertheless the law, if ever implemented, will be a positive step beyond the current blanket ban on trade union activity.

Yet the blackest mark on labour rights against the current government is it’s failure to end forced labour. The FTUB, and the Federation of Trade Unions – Kawthoolei (FTUK) have most recently documented in exhaustive detail, “the persistence of widespread forced labour practices by civil and military authorities in almost all of the country’s states and divisions” (see page 241). The government has faced decades of withering international criticism on this issue and knows exactly what it needs to do to eradicate it.

Without such action, the western businesses that are threatening to flood into Burma will almost certainly be benefitting from slave labour. And the TUC and our Burmese sister organisations will be the first to blow the whistle on them.

There are other areas urgently needing change. As the Burma Campaign UK have pointed out, a key test will be the upcoming budget of a government which spends “almost 20 times more on the military than it does on health.”

So there has been a some positive but limited progress on labour rights, and I personally think that this should be recognised. So let’s relax e.g. travel bans against those who have proven to be genuine reformers in the new government. But the key economic sanctions should stay in place until we have free and independent trade unions and the end of forced labour in the country.

Today, the TUC releases new research that shows the significant benefits that workplace union reps produce for employers and taxpayers.  The report also reveals serious inaccuracies in figures used by the so-called Taxpayers Alliance relating to the cost of paid time off.

“Facility Time for union reps – separating fact from fiction” not only updates the value of the savings to employers and the taxpayer that result from the work that reps do, but also reveals a significant return on investment in relation to the cost of the paid time off that reps receive.

The research, conducted for the TUC by the University of Hertfordshire’s Work and Employment Research Unit found that the total savings for employers and therefore the tax payer that result from the work union reps carry out in the PUBLIC sector equate to a value of up £586 million per annum.  This means that for every £1 spent on paid time off for union reps in the public sector (using even the disputed TPA cost estimate of £113m pa) between £2 and £5 is return in accrued benefits: a significant return on investment.

The research also reveals serious flaws in the methodology used by the so-called TPA and other organisations to estimate the alleged cost of facility time.

For example, you may have thought that those great unions such as APEX, ASTMS and MSF no longer existed? You’d be correct of course, but alleged payments to them are included in the figure calculated by the TPA.

You may be aware of the good works undertaken by organisations such as the General Medical Council, the British Orthodontic Society and the Alliance of Charters Towers State Schools. If you are, you’ll no doubt be surprised to hear them described as trade unions.  They aren’t of course, but they are included in the TPA’s dodgy figures.

And if you’ve ever heard of any of these organisations – NMC SHA, HTCC and GAB – let alone think that they’re trade unions, then you join a very small group of people (yes that’s right, the TPA).

Here at the TUC, we are trying hard NOT to believe the rumour that the TPA’s original draft also listed organisations called TTFN, OMG and LOL. 

If you strip out the alleged payments to these organisations and other inaccuracies (yes there are more) then the true “cost” of paid time off for workplace union reps comes to around £80m pa.  This increases the return on investment figure to between £3 and £9 for every £1 spent.  A return you’d struggle to get from many FTSE250 companies.

There is a serious point to this.  It appears that the TPA and their fellow travellers in TURC are so desperate to hide their ideological hatred of unions that they appear prepared to cobble together any old figures and call it research to gloss over their prejudice.

It’s a shame that the government has to waste time dealing with such people.  Instead, they should listen to employers who are of course are fully aware of the value of workplace union reps.  That’s why you will rarely, if ever, hear the TPA or TURC mention them.  But we’re happy to give the final word (for now at least) to three senior managers, all of whom (probably unlike anyone connected with the TPA and TURC) have real day to day experience of working with workplace union reps.

‘We value the partnership working that has been developed with our unions and believe that it is important staff get time to participate fully in the partnership and in staff representation roles. As a result we have been able to develop a range of effective policies, managed workforce reductions without recourse to compulsory redundancies and reduced workplace conflict’.

Nick Parker, Head of Human Resources, Airedale NHS Foundation Trust

“We greatly value the contribution made by workplace union reps at Merseytravel and the relationship that managers have with them.  We regard the cost of paid time off as an investment on which the organisation has had a significant return, reducing sickness and grievances, supporting succession planning and improvements to customer care.”

Liz Chandler, Director of Corporate Development, Merseytravel

“Newcastle City Council has sustained excellent industrial relations through an extended period of unprecedented change.  The full support of trade Unions and the involvement of workers from across the organisation has been instrumental in helping us achieve budget savings of £44m in the current financial and to develop proposal to save a further £30m next year. Many of these proposals arise from the innovation and ideas of our staff, and the contribution of Trade Union workplace reps has been an important part of that success”.

Barry Rowland, Chief Executive, Newcastle City Council

You can access the full report (pdf) here.

I’ve been wanting to blog about the role that communications play in campaigns and organising for quite a while now so it was with great interest I read Mehdi Hasan’s article for the New Statesman where he explores the role of framing in politics.

By and large, the most difficult thing in the campaigns I have been involved in, is communicating what the campaign is trying to achieve to a wider audience.  Often I hear complaints that the media is against us and no one want to listen.  I can’t give you a silver bullet but I can point to some ways in which you might be more successful in communicating.

Firstly, you need to know what exactly you want to achieve.  The more specific you are, the easier it is to explain to someone else.

Second, be in control of the message and of the frame.  By and large, human beings will gravitate to messages and ideas that fit in their understanding of the world and how it makes them feel.  Define a message based on what you think will resonate on that emotional level.  Don’t define your message based on what your opposing group have said, it’ll only reinforce their view.

Lastly, use techniques like Anger Hope Action in all aspects of communications, not just in face to face conversations.

If you’re interested more in how you can communicate effectively during a campaign you can come on our Communications and Campaigns course or read these thought provoking books:

• Don’t Think of an Elephant! Know your Values and Frame the Debate; George Lakoff
• Rhetoric for Radicals; Jason Del Gandio

Striking workers and supporters marching on 30 November. Photo: TUC

We’ve always said that the November 30 strike was a tremendous success. Once you take into account the number of workers taking part, the range of unions and occupations – some of whom had never struck before – the level of support across the country was brilliant.

Of course, some publications and commentators had decided even before the strike took place that it was a flop.

Well, today’s monthly employment figures from the Office for National Statistics provide a definitive rebuttal. They include the first set of industrial dispute statistics covering November and they show that the number of working days “lost” to disputes (the ONS’s language, not mine) in November was the highest for 20 years:

Whenever there’s large scale industrial action there will always be people who are eager to tell us that it was a failure. In every major dispute, a new generation of activists learns that these people don’t know as much as they pretend.

If you know anyone who was depressed by those articles, show them these figures. They might cheer them up.

Handing in the million signature petition to recall Gov Walker. Photo: Wisconsin AFL-CIO

Unions in Wisconsin, a year into their titanic battle with Republican Governor Scott Walker over the scrapping of collective bargaining rights for public sector workers, were celebrating today as they handed in over a million signatures on a recall petition demanding a new election for the Governorship. Under Wisconsin law, they only needed 540,000, but the final count showed that over a million Wisconsin voters want Walker out. What’s really incredible about this is that there are only 3.2 million people registered to vote in the state, and at the last gubernatorial election, only just over a million voted for Governor Walker. The summer recall election – in a state that voted Democrat in 2008 but Republican in 2010 – will be a key indicator of how the Presidential election will go. At the same time, recall petitions on three Republican state senators were also handed in.