That this House takes note of the future of trade unions; and of wider industry representation, solidarity and collective action; and of the 100th anniversary of the International Labour Organization.
My Lords, it is a privilege to open this debate. The original purpose in seeking this debate was to allow this House to acknowledge and record the social progress brought to workers throughout the world by the creation of the International Labour Organization since it was created a century ago, and to show the part played by trade unions in that achievement. But in doing that, I suppose it is impossible for us not to wonder what changes the next 100 years will impose on the world of work, and in turn to consider what laws—and changes in the ways we represent and defend people at work—we will need here in the UK and internationally if we are to maintain and build on the advances that have been achieved for workers and their families.
The International Labour Organization first met in 1920, with Britain as a founding member. It was part of the Treaty of Versailles, created in the wake of the horrors of World War I. Its driving force was the belief that universal and lasting peace can be accomplished only if it is based on social justice. It heralded a unique international tripartite system of decision-making, where Governments, employers and trade unions were tasked with making the world of work a better place—a ground-breaking event at a time when there were no accepted “workers’ rights”.
The ILO’s agenda was a set of principles, among which was the right to freedom of association for working people to form and join trade unions. Its early years are not remembered as years of social progress, as that period was dominated by the great depression and culminated in the even more devastating calamity of the Second World War, but the ILO’s considerable contribution to the development of social justice was acknowledged when in 1946 its role was strengthened as it became the first specialised agency of the United Nations.
In 1969 the ILO was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, reinforcing the truth in its founding message of the immutable link between peace and social justice. Over the years the great and the good—popes, presidents, statesmen and kings—have addressed its conferences, all testifying to the powerful force for good the ILO has proved to be. In the post-war years, the ILO has grown in reputation by leading in the fight against great social injustices, such as apartheid, child labour and modern slavery. By its adoption of a comprehensive range of international labour standards it has created a floor of rights for the working world and become the world’s standard bearer for what it defines as decent work.
There are many Members of this House, past and present, who have contributed to the work of the ILO and many who have in addition served the trade union movement with distinction here and abroad. I had the honour of being the president of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union in this country, but it was in my role as general secretary of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions that I first started to work with the ILO and understand the value of its crucial work. My job with the ICFTU was to represent trade unions across the world, whose combined membership at that time was 165 million. The firefighting part of the job was taking solidarity and support to trade union movements in individual countries, particularly those where trade unions were facing repression, such as Colombia where hundreds of trade unionists were being murdered every year; and helping to organise and lead demonstrations against severe social injustices, such as the march through Moscow against the prolonged non-payment of 20 million workers in Putin’s Russia.
My Lords, I am delighted to follow my noble friend Lord Jordan and I congratulate him on his enterprise in initiating this debate. In so doing I also congratulate the ILO on its 100th anniversary. During that century, as the last surviving League of Nations institution, the ILO, as my noble friend said, has been fundamental in establishing the concept and details of human rights in the workplace and upholding the dignity of people at work. Its core conventions, with commitments to eradicating forced labour, child labour and unfair discrimination, have been important influences in many countries—unfortunately, not all—and also influential has been the continuous campaign to promote trade union rights and decent work as part of the UN human rights framework. The ILO has been able to hold Governments who breach these rights to public account, and so expose abuses. It did this famously in Poland when Solidarność was carrying the torch of freedom in the Soviet era, and did it on a more modest scale in the UK, criticising aspects of the Thatcher era anti-trade union legislation. The ILO also works to secure labour rights in trade agreements: that is likely to be crucial in any post-Brexit free trade agreements that are to be negotiated.
The ILO is run on tripartite principles—unions, Governments and employers working together and, historically, coming up with plans that command consent among the three parties. These principles of tripartism became the basis of post-war reconstruction in most of western Europe after the Second World War. It is a proud achievement of the ILO that the European social model, as it is called, is rooted in the ILO conventions and principles. The approval this year of a convention on preventing violence and harassment at work shows that its system still works to help transform workers’ lives. I thank the ILO for all its work and I will be interested to hear the Government’s current view and how they are helping it, I hope, go from strength to strength for the next century.
My Lords, I declare my interest as the president of the British Dietetic Association and, separately, as president of the pilots’ union BALPA. I do so to point out that Conservatives, too, can not only support but actively support trade unions and I pay tribute to the previous speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Monks, who was my predecessor at BALPA. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Jordan, for initiating this most valuable debate. One cannot fill in all the history of the ILO but perhaps I can fill in a couple of bits that are missing.
First, it was in 1916 that David Lloyd George established the first Ministry of Labour, and George Barnes became the first such Minister. It was in that same year of 1916 that the TUC drew up and published the first statement of workers’ rights, to be included in the peace treaty at Versailles. That was a historic document because leading out of it came the ILO; there were of course a lot of other people who had input. In its early years the ILO had a difficult time, largely because of the United States’ refusal to endorse Versailles and the fact that the new Government in Russia—the Soviet Union, as it then was—decided that the ILO was a capitalist plot to undermine the workers. It was attacked vigorously from both sides but then saved by Roosevelt.
When Roosevelt came into power in 1933 the ILO took on a new life, not so much through him but very much with the assistance of Frances Perkins, his Labor Secretary. I shall stop my history lesson in a minute but John Winant, who later became the ambassador in London, was appointed by the Roosevelt Administration as the first senior American to serve in the ILO. He was followed by a series of Americans. I am in no way demeaning the contribution of the Brits but David Morse, who took over as secretary of the ILO in the immediate aftermath of the war and was Truman’s Labor Secretary, undoubtedly shaped it and carried it forward for a long time after that.
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jordan, for securing this debate and for his panoramic introduction, which really set the scene for the contributions to follow.
Trade unions are not only good for their members and for workers in general; they are good for the country. There is very strong evidence of the positive link between union-organised workplaces and improved productivity, for example. It is also worth remembering that, with more than 6 million members, the trade union movement is the largest voluntary membership organisation in the country.
I start by declaring my membership of Unite the Union, which also pays me a regular pension. TUC figures, as of May 2019, show an increase in union membership over the last year of 102,000. As the TUC has said to those who dismiss the unions as old hat or irrelevant, any newspaper proprietor who increased circulation by 100,000 in a year would be pinning on a gold medal. The increase, however, masks a problem. Membership in the public sector increased by 149,000, while membership in the private sector went down by 47,000; but the public sector is decreasing while the private sector grows. Some 85% of all employment is now in the private sector, with 15% in the public sector.
There are other issues to consider. Young workers move jobs more frequently than their older colleagues. Only 14.1% of workers who have been with their employer for two years or less are in a trade union. In contrast, 44% of those who have been with the same employer for 20 years or more are in trade unions. This causes not only the problem of an ageing or dying-out membership, but the disproportionate influence of one group against another skews union policies and priorities.
Recently, I spent some time working with Unions 21, a loose affiliation of trade unions that work together to build ideas for increased membership, improve involvement of members and increase their influence, impact and effectiveness within the world of work. I chair a group of union leaders and academics, looking particularly at employee engagement and the employee voice. We have been speaking with trade unions from other countries and looking at some of their actions and research. A big message has been the need to develop a positive agenda. Most workers want to enjoy their work; they do not want to consider it in a negative way. They prioritise access to training and to information; they want to be able to speak up for themselves but understand little of the value of collective bargaining; and they want to be more involved than has been the tradition in many union-organised workplaces.
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Prosser. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Jordan, on this timely debate on the future of trade unions, at the 100th anniversary of the International Labour Organization. It is also appropriate to reflect on the history of some of the trade unions because, if you do not understand where you came from, it is difficult to understand where you are going.
I will spend a minute talking about the trade union I was a member of for 20 years, the General, Municipal, Boilermakers and Allied Trade Union—or, to give it its modern name, the GMB. I would like to thank one person in particular: Will Thorne. Will Thorne was born in Birmingham in 1857. He lived in great poverty and began working in a brickyard at the age of six, working 12 hours a day. In 1882, he moved to London, found employment at the local gasworks and joined the Social Democratic Federation, a forerunner of the Labour Party. He was taught to read and write by Karl Marx’s daughter, and then helped to form a new union, the Gas Workers and General Labourers Union, later to become the GMB. The first success of that union was to get the 12-hour day reduced to eight hours. He moved steadily onwards and, in 1918, won the seat of Plaistow with 94.9% of the vote—a record for a Labour candidate that stands to this day. He retained that seat until his retirement at the 1945 general election, aged 87, and was the oldest sitting Member at the time.
My story is much less riveting. Having passed the City & Guilds exam in gas fitting, I became a shop steward fairly quickly. During that time, as a Lancashire region delegate, I had a strong relationship with the London region delegates at conferences. In the bars and conference centres, I met a young Paul Kenny; a delegate who would go on to become general-secretary of the union and be given a knighthood. I also met a certain Mary Turner, a firebrand London girl who was actually Irish. She eventually received the CBE. Those times helped to form my views on equality and fairness in the wider context of politics, and I could not have had better teachers.
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Lord Morris of Handsworth (Lab)
My Lords, today we pay tribute to the ILO for its contribution to our social and economic development over the past 100 years. On a personal note, I pay tribute to the late Ernest Bevin, one of my predecessors at the T&G. As Minister of Labour, he contributed much to the development of the ILO and other institutions.
Although there were trade unions as far back as the early 17th century, the TUC celebrated its 150th anniversary last year. During that time, trade unions have provided advice at work and fought to improve pay and conditions, and they have been a force for fairness and social justice. Although membership increased in 2017, it is reported that just 23% of employees are now members of a trade union. There is a growing power imbalance at work, contributing to the massive rise in inequality throughout our society. It should surprise no one that people feel a lack of influence and control at work and in society generally. We are now experiencing public anger and fear for the future at a higher level than I can ever remember.
In a speech in 2017, Andy Haldane, the chief economist at the Bank of England, said that the decline in union density had contributed to the slowest period of wealth growth in over a century. He evidenced a clear wage premium associated with trade union membership, possibly as a result of the greater bargaining power of union membership. He suggested that estimates of the aggregate wage premium in the UK are typically centred in the range of 10% to 15%. Therefore, trade unions are good for workers and good for the economy, with decent pay bringing higher spending and higher tax income. What Chancellor would reject that?
Yet it is reported that the UK is now the fifth most unequal country in Europe and that more than one-fifth of its population live on incomes below the poverty line. The irony is that most of these households are in work, yet every time there is a debate on poverty, inequality and austerity, we hear from the Government that everything is fine because employment is rising. Trade unions can tell the Government why austerity bites, even though you are employed. Among the causes are zero-hours contracts, under which, the TUC states, workers typically earn one-third less than average employees; the gig economy, with workers often waiting to hear whether there will be work that day and for how long; contract work—such workers do not get a job if they do not agree to become self-employed; and outsourced working, including working in some government departments, I am told. Meanwhile the Living Wage Foundation has said that workers paid the national living wage are struggling to keep their heads above water. The Low Pay Commission reported earlier this year that tens of thousands of workers are, illegally, not being paid the national living wage. One is bound to ask what stopped them joining a trade union.
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Morris, and to commend the introduction to this debate by the noble Lord, Lord Jordan. On a personal basis, I was particularly touched that he mentioned Bill Brett’s contribution to the ILO. In the last few weeks of his life, Bill Brett was my roommate in Fielden House and I much respected him.
I declare my interests: I have been a member of the GMB for nearly 50 years—a bit longer than the noble Lord, Lord Goddard. I also share a role with the noble Lord, Lord Balfe, in relation to BALPA at this disappointing time.
This weekend, in my adopted county of Dorset, I shall be in Tolpuddle recalling the day nearly 200 years ago when a group of agricultural workers were imprisoned and deported for the simple reason that they had combined to discuss their wages. Regrettably, in some parts of the world, there are trade unionists and workers who are faced with even more stringent sanctions in this day and age. That is where the ILO and the international trade union movement need to play their role. In a globalised world, workers need to reach across frontiers, but so do institutions, such as the ILO, which support those workers. Over the two centuries since Tolpuddle, workers’ conditions and rights have not advanced in a straight line. Indeed, I would contend that here and in several other countries there has been a setback in recent years.
By the end of the 19th century, trade union and workers’ rights had prospered in a number of industrialised countries. At the end of the First World War, it was an important plank of the post-war settlement that the ILO was established and that workers’ rights were seen as part of that settlement to minimise conflict between the nations. A key part of this were the rules that governed not only the standards for workers but their right to associate and, at least to a limited extent, to withdraw their labour. Regrettably, almost immediately after that came a period of setback. In some countries, such as Germany and Spain, which had had strong trade unions, the fascist regimes suppressed them. In so-called workers’ states such as the Soviet Union, they were incorporated into the state and party apparatus. It took till after the Second World War for us to begin to rebuild an international trade union movement; for example, the British trade unions and the TUC helped rebuild the structure of trade unions in Germany and other countries on the continent.
My Lords, I declare my interests as noted in the register, most particularly as founder and chair of Doteveryone, a small charity championing responsible technology, and as a board member of Twitter. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jordan, for his fantastic introduction. I was so delighted that technology played such a central role in the way he expressed the past and future of the trade union movement.
As with everything, the world of digital is blowing apart with a tidal wave the ways of working and the sectors in which we have operated in the past. Some of this is miraculous. I am sure that many in the Chamber have enjoyed the extraordinary services of Deliveroo to their front door. I bet many noble Lords have jumped in an Uber, and, considering the quality of the speeches this morning, I think many might put their work on freelancewriting.com, where you can get cheap speeches written for you by experts. We have seen many gains as a society and as consumers from the fantastic pace of change and the flexible and independent nature of work today. But, as I hope to argue in my short remarks, there are many perils. We underestimate them at our very grave risk.
Some 4.5 million people are employed in the so-called gig economy right now. That is one in 10 workers. This is a huge number of people without the stability of employment. While this can be fantastically empowering if you can work on the terms you wish for, it can also be fantastically stressful and make you feel insecure and anxious. Often these barriers fall on the most vulnerable people already; I particularly think of women and those with children or in solo care of a parent, child or other relation. These are complex challenges. I am 46. People of my generation will have around 12 careers in their lifetimes. My first cousin is 25. She is more likely to have 22 careers in her lifetime. If you are 10, half the jobs that will be open to you have not even been invented yet. This is a dramatically changing world, as many noble Lords have highlighted, a world in which it is hard to reflect on how we should help and protect people who want to work in new ways and who face the challenges of the dramatic shifts in workplace.
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The “building the future” part of the job was taking the social justice aims of the world’s trade unions and turning them into international labour standards through the ILO. There was an urgency at that time to see them embedded as social clauses within the programmes of United Nations institutions, such as the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, because, as the globalisation of trade unfolded, the programmes of those institutions were having disastrous consequences for millions of workers and their families in developing countries.
The International Trade Union Confederation, which was formerly the ICFTU, works to ensure that worker delegates at the ILO are organised to vote for new standards and in turn are encouraged to lobby their national Governments and employers for support. It is a tough assignment, and when I was tasked with it, the job was made a lot easier by the formidable presence of the late Lord Brett, who was chairman of the ILO workers group. That game plan continues and has produced excellent results. It is helped by the fact that the ILO has significantly raised its profile and performance under the impressive leadership of its present director-general, Mr Guy Ryder, a former British trade unionist.
Trade unions in all countries are now facing new challenges and seemingly intractable problems. The past 40 years have seen a maelstrom of change that has radically impacted on people’s working lives everywhere, starting with the globalisation of trade which saw 2 billion people brought into the competitive rat race they call world trade. When combined with the dramatic advances in science and technology and, in particular, information technology, that became a catalyst for a chain reaction of change that has totally altered the working world that many of us in this House stepped into. Gone are the jobs for life that we expected, the predictable tools that our fathers—and sometimes our grandfathers—used and the regular hours of work. It is change that is not slowing but accelerating.
They say we are entering the fourth industrial revolution. Who can doubt it, when coming to a workplace near you are artificial intelligence, the internet of things, 3D printing, augmented and virtual reality, 5G and, just around the corner, quantum computing? This whirlwind of disruption has taken its toll on worker representation in most countries, and nowhere more so than here in Britain, the birthplace of trade unionism.
In 1979, with more than 13 million members, the British trade unions were more powerful than any trade union movement has ever been before or since. They used that power to significantly advance the standard of life of this country’s workers and their families. Yes, there were some abuses of that exceptional power, but always with the connivance of pusillanimous employers. Contrary to popular folklore, it was not Mrs Thatcher’s anti-union laws that destroyed the trade union’s big battalions; it was her catastrophic economic policy which was responsible for the dismantling of Britain’s wealth-creating manufacturing industry and, with it, the destruction of millions of jobs. However, the damage to trade union membership was severe and saw the start of a longer-term decline.
For employees in this country now, the world of work has never been more precarious or the need for strong trade union representation more urgent. The British TUC has done an excellent job not only in stemming the long-term decline in trade union membership but in starting to reverse it. However, the long-term trend in trade union membership density now demands even more radical ideas on recruitment and the servicing of members. Let there be no illusions about the magnitude of that challenge.
We were told in this Chamber earlier this week that there are 5.7 million small businesses in this country and that 96% of businesses employed fewer than 10 people. That is not fertile recruitment ground with our present trade union structures. We cannot change business structures, so we must change the way we do things. New technology, particularly communication technology, is shaping the world employees work in. That same technology can and must be used to enable trade unions to talk to them, recruit them and even serve them. Some might say it is impossible. I ask them to look again at the world of modern technology. It is delivering the impossible every year.
Even when British trade unionism is rebuilt—and it will be—there is another dimension that must be part of that rebuilding: the strengthening of the working relationships between national and international trade unions. Trade unions at national level do not always see the relevance of the work of international trade unions to the local struggles they face. I tell them, as I tell this House, that the relentless rise in the size and power of modern multinationals means that not even European laws will offer protection. These companies will move a successful company to the other side of the world in the blink of an eye if there is a penny more profit. Today’s multinationals are trading nomads and predators that can and do run rings around all Governments. Only when there is no country they can move to that does not have a floor of international workers’ rights will the rights we have won be safe. The ILO has spelled out that floor of rights in its centenary declaration on the future of work. It includes ensuring that all workers, regardless of status, enjoy fundamental workers’ rights: maximum working time limits; an adequate minimum wage; occupational health and safety; full gender equality at work; and equality for people with disabilities. Here are the civilising restraints that must bind the multinationals’ capricious activities.
This debate is about the real value that trade unionism has brought and can still bring to society. We live in a world where more than 700 million people still live in extreme poverty, where 60% of the world’s workers are stuck in the informal economy, where there are more than 200 million child labourers, where 2.8 million people die every year due to work-related sickness and accidents and about 40 deadly conflicts are being played out at any one time. The ILO was created 100 years ago in a world that desperately needed the labour standards it went on to set. The world still needs them now. Britain became the birthplace of trade unionism because they were needed then. The future of work tells us that we still need strong trade unions. When do we need them? What other answer is there to that but “now”? I hope that the Minister agrees.
Of course, the ILO has been affected by the pressures on trade unions in the last 40 years or so. My noble friend Lord Jordan spelled those out well and very interestingly in his contribution. It is clear that the rise of inequality from the early 1980s onwards has coincided with, and in part was caused by, the decline in trade union membership, and, more particularly, in the coverage of collective bargaining. Today in the UK only about one in four workers has their pay set by trade union negotiations. This retreat has meant that worker influence in companies has lessened. One result has been excessive pay levels in many boardrooms, as they have adopted a help-yourself, self-service practice, often unrelated to performance. The Conservative Government, through their anti-union laws restricting trade union freedoms, from the 1980s through to the Trade Union Act 2016, opened the door to unsavoury and unfair practices by unscrupulous, greedy employers—not all employers, but too many.
Conservative Governments ignored the fact that trade unions play a vital role in ensuring fair play at work. Union workplaces are safer, offer better training, provide more flexible working arrangements and are often more innovative. Their role in creating more equal societies has been endorsed by unlikely allies, such as the International Monetary Fund, the OECD and some central banks, which have come to recognise that strong unions can share out the productivity gains rather more fairly than if they do not exist. There has been some welcome recognition of this from Secretary of State Greg Clark in recent times, with the good work initiative, and plans on information and consultation to make it easier for workers to operate that. I wish him well in the future, and hope that in doing so, I do not seal his fate next week, when he faces his new boss in Downing Street.
What of the future? The UK needs a new settlement, which must involve progressive and responsible trade unionism, committed to raising productivity and performance, promoting long-termism and ensuring that the benefits of growth and the new digital technologies are distributed more fairly. The new settlement must promote a collaborative approach to work cultures, with a new emphasis on respect for workers and valuing their skills. I would like to see a concept of professionalism apply right through the labour force, not restricted to those with degrees and people with significant higher education experience.
I believe, as does the Labour Party, that to do this requires a reform in Whitehall, and the unification of labour market policy into a new, powerful department of work and employment, which would, among its other jobs, promote collective bargaining, a voice for working people and a high-skills, high-productivity agenda. A project of this kind will attract powerful enemies, but it will also attract wide support, including from the better employers. The cause is a great one. British workers must not be treated as second-class citizens. Already they are more vulnerable to job insecurity than those in some other advanced EU countries. Britain led the way in 1919-20 in establishing the ILO. We should take pride in its achievements. As my noble friend Lord Jordan said, many British trade unionists, as well as employers and government officials, have played a significant part in the organisation, going back to Ernest Bevin and Walter Citrine in the early days, and latterly, as my noble friend said, the late Bill Brett, chair of the workers’ group. In the TUC, we take particular pride in the fact that the current director-general, Guy Ryder, is a former member of the TUC staff. This shows that Britain can lead the way. It needs to do so in a whole range of issues on the labour market as the ILO enters its second century.
We have a lot to thank the ILO for. Even today, when you go to third-world countries such as Vietnam, where I was last year, the ILO plays a sterling role there in getting adherence to its conventions for workers, who are often exploited in that country. The ILO is the one independent voice that can put forward demands for decent working conditions, so full marks to the ILO.
The British trade union movement has problems. It is not that the Tory Government have got rid of trade unionism, but that demand has washed in a different direction. If you ask my children their view of trade unions, I am afraid it is based on Len McCluskey, which is not an attractive view. They do not look at Len McCluskey and say, “This is the sort of world we want to live in”, but you never see the word mentioned in the public prints without the trade union connection being made. The fact of the matter is that trade unions were overtaken by events.
I well recall that when I was David Cameron’s envoy to the trade union movement, he met the general secretary of a very large union—not the T&G, needless to say—and he said, somewhat mischievously, “I want to understand your concerns. Which one of the laws that Tony Blair has passed to help you would you be most reluctant to see me abolish?” There was rather an embarrassed silence. We have to face the fact that, from 1979 onwards, unions have had a pretty rough ride from both Governments, frankly, but that it is also up to them to bring themselves forward.
I commend the TUC because it has not fallen back into its laager. It has pioneered racial tolerance. It would have been very easy for the TUC to say, “British jobs for British workers”—as I remember someone once said—and for it to discriminate against people of colour, but it has not. In fact, it has gone the other way: it has led the public perception that trade unionists stand for equality and fairness, so it has a lot to commend it. I hope the TUC will continue for many years to come to pursue its very positive policies.
Speaking of which, I want to say something to our Minister. I am delighted to see my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe here. At the time of the 2016 Act, the matter of electronic balloting came up very vigorously. The Minister, as she then was, was able to promise that the matter would be carefully examined, and indeed it was. Sir Ken Knight, who carefully examined it, came out in favour of some trials—not the whole thing, but he was willing to try it. It appears that this recommendation has been forgotten, but we want to see it implemented. It is a matter of honour; the Government promised something. They have had the inquiry and, in many people’s view, if we are to have a level playing field and say that we all appreciate trade unions, which I believe both sides of the House do, we now need to see these trials put into operation. As reported at our party meeting the other day, people of 15 years of age are entitled to join the Young Conservatives and vote for the leader of our party by electronic ballot. If we can extend it to all of the members of the Conservative Party, stretching from those aged 15 to whatever age—a very old age—I think we can afford to have a few test ballots to see whether it will work with the trade union movement. I will not make a lot of requests, but I ask the Minister to look at operationalising that commitment, so generously given when we were passing the 2016 Act.
Over half of young workers across the European Union are on temporary contracts, which is close to an all-time high, according to an article in the Financial Times. Far from being hostile towards the trade union movement—most noble Lords will remember the Government’s Trade Union Bill with a great deal of distaste—there should be a welcome and encouragement of organised workplaces, with their knowledge, experience and proven track record on improved rates of productivity.
The British trade union movement—and in particular the TUC—is renowned globally. We have contributed to the development of unions and people’s organisations around the world. We have helped workers in developing countries to receive training, which in turn has helped companies and businesses to develop and grow. After the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh, the first organisation on the scene was the International Trade Union Confederation. It managed to develop order out of chaos, so that the families of the dead and injured were not forgotten or left destitute. It was the international trade union movement that kick-started the fall of the Soviet Union. The trade union movement in the UK is part of civil society and deserves to be better understood and treated with more respect.
Noble Lords might ask what the point of that small canter through history was, what its relevance is today in a modern, globalised world of work, and whether trade unions are still relevant. On the one hand, that union produced a CBE, a knight of the realm, the largest majority for a Labour MP and me, a humble Member of the House of Lords—not bad for a gasworkers’ union.
On the other hand, I did some research for today’s debate. When I was a shop steward, one of my main interests was health and safety, and so I came upon the most recent report published by the Health and Safety Executive, dated 3 July this year. It shows the following for fatal injuries at work: the headline figure is that 147 workers were killed in Great Britain last year. In basic terms, that is almost three deaths a week. If Members of the other place suffered anything like that mortality rate, something would be done to reduce dramatically those odds. The figure for fatal injuries in construction is the lowest, at 30, but that number has fluctuated over the last five years, ranging between 30 and 47. The point is that fatal injuries in the construction industry are four times higher than across other industries. Is it a coincidence that the construction industry is the least unionised in the country? That is a real example of the value of trade unions: they can save lives, protect workers and improve the quality of life of their members.
However, we need to do more. We need new employment models. Automation and zero-hours contracts have made many current forms of employment and future work prospects extremely unpredictable. People are in work, but they are not necessarily secure in their work. They are working in the gig economy, and the UK framework of employment rights, regulations and protections built up over decades through the trade union movement is now unfit for purpose.
There is a pressing need to maintain freedom of association and to ensure that the rights and interests of employees are properly represented. Indeed, we believe that society will benefit if we do that. We will build a more confident relationship between managers and employees. Liberal Democrats will continue to fight for those principles and to support the wider trade union movement.
There has been a small increase in trade union membership, and the benefits of joining are attractive. Trade unions offer a full range of services and benefits, wage negotiation, legal representation, insurance, healthcare and more. That is a decent package. Clearly, non-union workers are not getting that message, nor the message that trade union membership is likely to lead to higher wages and better conditions. People are fearful of the future and worry about job prospects for them and their families. The prospect of leaving the European Union has caused considerable unease, as have the new technologies and automation, which are seen to induce and promote low pay in many instances. The isolation that many of these problems brings is the cause of much unrest, yet, as I found when I first joined my union in the 1950s, membership is a community in which we can share problems and work to overcome them, and strength in numbers is important.
Trade unions must find ways to inform the country as a whole—workers and their families, employees, shareholders and government—that trade unions are not their enemy. They are, and should be recognised as, contributors. We have to challenge some of the right-wing press and demonstrate that trade unions can be an asset, not a liability, and that they are essential to business not only as workers but as consumers. Let me repeat a story I heard a long time ago which demonstrates the reality of the workplace. The late Henry Ford was visiting one of his factories in Detroit. His guest for the day was the late Walter Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers. Henry Ford was describing how he had automated the factory and boasted that the robots would not be asking for a pay rise and that he could rely on their accuracy. Walter Reuther, the trade union leader, replied, “Yes, Henry, but they won’t be buying any of your damn cars either”. My message to trade unions is clear: we have inherited the past, and now you must build the future.
Trade unions grew in strength in almost every industrialised country from the end of the Second World War until the 1980s. Since then, as others have said, there has been a decline; we need to examine the reasons for it, which I see as fourfold. First, there was a changing labour market, as has been referred to. The large places of work were destroyed in the 1980s, in this country and others, by technological change as well as political decisions. That made life for trade unions more difficult because not only is it harder to recruit in smaller workplaces but not having large bases can prevent them establishing their own local lay memberships and shop stewards on which they used to depend.
Secondly, more recently, we have had the move towards the gig economy, with irregular patterns of work, individualisation of contracts—if indeed there are any contracts—zero hours, minimum pay and so forth. For those workers, particularly the younger workers, the benefits of collective bargaining and trade union membership are not that obvious. This has been compounded by the outsourcing by large companies and the public sector of so much of their routine work, in particular. For example, just this morning I spoke to a social worker two miles away who is employed by a private company for Westminster Council. He works for 13 hours because he has to move between appointments but is actually paid for only six hours. That is the nature of the labour market in this country for millions of our workers. At the very rough end—we have just been talking about modern slavery—we saw only last week the impact in this country of European workers being gangmastered totally and utterly illegally, an increasing feature of parts of the labour market.
The third reason is, of course, globalisation, which has its benefits but also its setbacks. Here I focus on the situation in other countries as well: in the same way that we have exported carbon emissions, we have exported some of our bad labour practices. We have responsibilities as consumers here, because the cheap clothes and cheap food we get, which used to be produced in Europe, are now often made by those suffering appalling conditions in, for example, Bangladesh and China, yet we continue to buy them. Within multinational companies, which often pride themselves on standards, their own supply chains and sourcing also make use of those very poor workplaces.
However, there is a fourth reason: the failure of the unions themselves to successfully adapt. We must adapt to new technology and to some of the aspects of the changing labour market. Looking back in history, in the 1880s and the 1890s we saw the growth of new unionism, which created both my noble friend Lord Morris’s union and my own. It organised the manual workers who had largely been ignored by the craft unions. The unions needed to change and operate differently. They needed to accept different employment patterns and attitudes by the employers. We need a new unionism today. I hope the existing unions can adopt it but, if not, different organisations might have to do so.
The back-up to this is the role of the ILO and international standards. As we move away from the EU, with all its failings, we move away from an international labour standard-setting organisation. The ILO is the most important international one. It has its drawbacks and slowness, but it is vital. As we move to new trade arrangements around the world as so-called global Britain, the standards written into those trade agreements ought to be, as a minimum, those of the International Labour Organization, but they also need rather better enforcement. In this day and age it is quite difficult for the workers of the world to unite, and they need some support in uniting. The ILO has, for 100 years now, been that main support.
This is why we face a huge hotchpotch of regulations and attempts by unions, not just here but all over the world, to come to terms with these brave new ways of working. I am sure noble Lords are aware of some of the changes in Scandinavia, where there is no minimum wage but where individual collectives have negotiated with employers—a different model, but one that perhaps reflects more easily the changing nature of work.
Here we have struggled deeply to come to terms with some of these new and extremely powerful organisations. I pick Uber as an example. I have mixed feelings about this company. My own charity, Doteveryone, did some research on how consumers felt about some of the new platform-based businesses. One woman told us that she had been punched in the face twice by Uber drivers, yet continues to use the service nearly every week, for me a profound metaphor for where our relationship with technology sits. We seem to have a reactive view of this company in particular. They are taxed massively, even though most of the fleet are electric cars, while diesel taxis parade around London with no barrier to the exhaust fumes they let off into society. At the same time, we know that an Uber driver’s average wage is about £5 an hour, yet we seem unable to enforce the minimum wage for its hundreds of thousands of workers.
I say this not just to pick on Uber, but as an example of the complexity around how we unpick some of these new ways of working and new businesses. It is not just the so-called gig economy. Even in the main technology sector, the fastest-growing bit of our economy relies deeply on freelance and temporary workers. I have to reflect on Twitter—a company whose board I sit on—Facebook, YouTube and many other content-driven businesses that use a huge number of contractors, not full-time employees, to do the essential work of content moderation. As was exposed most recently by some journalists in the US, their work is often done in unfathomably bad conditions. They are exposed to content that none of us would want to see once in a lifetime, let alone many times an hour.
Again, these are complex problems to unpick. I would like to raise three challenges for the Minister and suggest three small solutions. First—and I am afraid that if you have heard me speak before, I will sound like a cracked record—we desperately need to build the digital skills and understanding of the most vulnerable in our society. This has not happened at the pace we need to build resilience in a strong economy in the future. Many millions of adults still cannot use any technology at all, or have no access to it or ability to pay for it; there are also several million more who do not have the next level of understanding and literacy to be able to look for work and find the opportunities that many of us take for granted. Some 90% of jobs are advertised only online, yet we still have many millions of adults who do not have access to the internet or the ability to use it. We have to keep fighting to build digital skills among our entire working population. I would love to hear the Minister’s thoughts on this.
Secondly, there are specific things that I believe we can do to help the workers in the so-called gig economy. One of the things that Doteveryone looked at was the portability of data. It may sound technical but is actually very important. If I work for one or other of the platform-based services, such as Rated People, as a builder, a plumber or whatever—a fantasy if you look at me, I know, but if I were able to be that skilled—I have no ability to take with me my working history. I can walk out of here and get a reference; none of the people in these platform-based businesses can do that. We argue that it is essential to think of exciting new ways to legislate around how people can move between these different jobs, especially if you think about the number of times people will have to shift careers in future. There need to be specific pieces of legislation, and not everyone has ideas about that.
Finally, as mentioned here many times before, we need to reinvigorate the trade union movement, build its digital skills and understanding and come up with creative new ways to help empower people. I believe deeply that the UK has an enormous global opportunity here. While I salute many people in our Government who stand up and say that we are going to have the biggest AI sector in the world or that this will be the best place to start a digital business, I am afraid I do not believe it. We have to look for other opportunities. We are a small country with a relatively challenging level of digitisation in our society. Protection of workers, clear frameworks of legislation and forward-thinking, digital-based legislation are where I believe we can triumph in the new world.