Delivering for young workers

In this Guest Post, Director of Unions21 and former Young Fabian Executive Committee member Dan Whittle, highlights the work Unions21 are doing to promote the role of unions to young people.

Whilst Young Fabian Trade Union Liaison Officer some years ago I realised that there was a growing need for young people to look to the protection of unions.

The interns movement was just beginning, social mobility was emerging as a key issue. The need for young people to seek the legal protection and effective campaigning power of unions was evident.

Since then the situation has spiralled in ways all reading this blog know all too well – yet only around 1 in 20 young people are union members.

Unions21 commissioned focus group research which uncovered a number of distinct and clear barriers that prevent young people from joining the union movement. These were categorised into four main themes:

1. Lack of awareness – i.e. low visibility and/or understanding of unions.
2. Lack of ‘push factors’ – e.g. many young people stated that they were happy with their workplace and did not feel they had come across any issues which might lead them to need a union’s support.
3. Lack of ‘pull factors’ – e.g. young people found it difficult to articulate anything that would attract them to join a union.
4. Repellent factors – e.g. cost of membership is off-putting for some, and some young people find it difficult to identify with union members.

I was pleased this year to work with a number of trade union members including Young Fabian Chair Adrian Prandle to produce a paper that offers fresh thinking on how we address these four themes with a focus on achieving benefit for young people in a time of cuts and economic stagnation.

In the publication: Delivering for Young Workers Michael Wheeler focuses on USDAW’s successes in making gains and communicating to young people the relevance of the union to their lives. Adrian Prandle and Paul Campbell see ATL’s ability to offer opportunities for professional development as key. Dannie Grufferty from NUS and Councillor Richard Watts from Islington Council explain how many of their organisations’ values and objectives for young people are shared by unions, and offer ideas for improved joint-working. Dannie Grufferty makes a timely argument for a student TUC card.

Each of the authors gives an insight into how they believe young people are being adversely affected by the policy decisions of the government and the unique role unions can play in limiting the damage and providing an alternative.

Alongside it, we launched a video made with a group of young trade union reps from across Britain: http://youtu.be/x-C9vZkoeUk The young people featured in the film – Jake, Sam, Tom, Kirsty, Ruth and Helen – share our concern that too many young people lack the support and protection of union membership.

Dan Whittle is Director of Unions 21.

The New Generation: what do we want workplaces and the economy to look like?

Chair of the Work and Families Young Fabian Policy Development Group, Josie Cluer, highlights key issues from her chapter in the just published Young Fabian pamphlet, The New Generation. We are very keen to hear what you think of the pamphlet – please let us know your thoughts by posting a comment. This is the third in a series of posts from the authors of ‘The New Generation’, which you can read by clicking here.

To win again, and win again soon, Labour needs to be seen as a party of government. Therefore, we need a compelling alternative economic strategy to address the economic reality. Anyone who opposes every cut in public spending is in denial of the economic situation. We must articulate how we would deal with the economic crisis differently from the current government. This must be based on fairness: cuts should be spread evenly across the income spectrum.

Perhaps in the past Labour has been agnostic about the kinds of industries and the kinds of jobs that we want in Britain: as long as the economy is booming, the reasons don’t matter. But the crisis in the banking sector showed that our economy was too dependent on the financial sector; and the cuts to be implemented will demonstrate that it is too dependent on the public sector. Similarly, our values should warn against an economy over-reliant on the grey, informal economy, which routinely exploits its low skilled, low paid workforce, and offers little progression or hope for them.

As we begin to recover from the recession and build the economy again, there is an opportunity to reshape the economy to be more resilient, as well as better for jobs and communities.

Our ambition should be for Britain to lead the world in the industries of the future. This does not mean “picking winners”; it requires a far more subtle approach. But all government actions – not just those in industry – contribute to the willingness of enterprises and industries to invest and develop in Britain.

Ed Miliband should consider:

• An inward investment review to understand fully the factors which drive investment in the kinds of high skill, high value industries we want
• Policies which incentivise parts of the economy we want to grow, like green industries, social enterprises and the creative economy.

Similarly, Labour should not be agnostic about the kinds of jobs we want. Our ambition should be for fair and satisfying workplaces.

New Labour’s vision of economic efficiency and social justice should remain our ambition. Faced with the challenges of an ageing population, emerging economies and globalisation, Britain’s economy cannot afford to have so many people out of work. At the same time, many who do not work are prevented by a labour market that is insufficiently flexible to enable them to juggle work with families and other responsibilities. Every mother who chooses not to work because she’s fed up of the inflexibility her employer gives her to look after her kids if they’re off school sick is a blow to the economy. And it’s unfair on her. Every older worker who is denied a job because the employer worries about him being a bit slow up the stairs is a blow to the economy. And it’s unfair on him. And every person whose employer cannot give him the flexibility to manage his mental health problems is a blow to the economy. And it’s unfair on him.

Ed Miliband should initiate a joint union-employer commission on “fair workplaces of the future” looking at:

• How unions can improve the workplace
• Parents working rights
• Technology
• Mental health at work
• Working hours
• Older workers

Labour has long won people’s hearts through its vision about the kind of society we want to live in. By being bold about the kind of economy we want, and the kind of jobs we want, we can win people’s heads back too.

This post originally appeared on Progress online.

Make sure you leave on time …

Today marks WYPHD – not an obvious abbreviation is it? But it’s one that effects much of the population and many Young Fabian members. Work Your Proper Hours Day is the day when the average person who does unpaid overtime would start to get paid if they did all their unpaid overtime at the start of the year. A whole two months into the year – pretty shocking, eh?

And that is just the average. The TUC report today that there has been a further increase in the number of Britons doing ‘extreme’ unpaid overtime – that’s more than ten hours a week above contracted hours. Their WYPHD will be not until at least 26th April.

There’s 3 interesting aspects to this.

Firstly, speaking from my own experience and that of friends and colleagues, I suspect this affects a large proportion of young people – perhaps trying to impress in their first job after leaving education – and even more so Young Fabian members, a number of whom have jobs that will be stretched to fit the anti-social hours of parliament.

Secondly, the context of the recession. Whilst more people are working more hours than they are being paid for, unemployment is rising. Could the sum of a team’s additional hours put in actually be enough to create new jobs? Are young school leavers or university graduates struggling in the jobs market suffering more than they need to? It seems that during the recession there have been more temporary contracts being offered where once there may have been permanent jobs – is the nature of such work pressuring young workers to stay in the office longer to secure the prize of permanent employment, foregoing short-term health for long-term security?

Thirdly, and very importantly, there is a gender divide. The group with highest proportion of people working unpaid overtime, and the highest proportion undertaking extreme overtime, is single women. Level pegging in numbers doing unpaid overtime with single men is the group containing married or cohabiting couples without children. A majority of Young Fabian members who are working will fit into these categories. We can but speculate why it is that women are working more for free. Is it a greater work ethic? Or is it a way to show one’s value in a country still blighted by unfair gender pay gaps?

The TUC website has some other interesting stats. And the WYPHD site contains an unpaid overtime calculator and some games and novelties worth a quick look (during your lunch break?).

Plus, eagle-eyed news followers may notice that the long hours advice clinic has been put together by a Professor who has found fame elsewhere this week.

Respect, Empower, Include: Everyday people. Extraordinary results.

Stronger together. Big tent. Opportunity for all.

Three phrases we’ve all heard within the broad spectrum of the labour movement. If we are to take one thing from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, particularly noting where we stand politically right now, it is absolutely imperative that we start living and breathing such mantras in all we do as thinkers and campaigners on the left.

Unlike much of the Young Fabians’ excellent work over the years, the three publications we are presenting on our website today are not about policy. They are about people, relationships, our values, and the way we on the left organise and campaign. What the 80 members of the Young Fabian and Labour Staff Network delegation to Ohio last October/November saw was not a campaign impossible to emulate, nor one which formed on a radically different basis to any other successful campaign. But they did take part in an organisation that succeeded in spreading its best practice nationwide, which was coherent, attractive and approachable. It was a campaign that recognised the value of individuals and the strength of their collective endeavours. And it gave them a reason to take part in what Gordon Brown has called, people-powered politics.

Respect meant taking seriously the experiences, knowledge, skills and resources that were brought to the table by anyone and everyone. Include meant incorporating that offer when making decisions. And Empower meant the establishment of a structure that didn’t just assign tasks but allowed well-trained and supported volunteers to take real ownership.

In the neighbourhood in Columbus I campaigned in, the canvassing teams were run by volunteer Cecil Webster, a retired colonel from Texas. His military experience was recognised and utilised. And it made him perfect for this role: his skills of motivation kept canvassers plugging away to cover the patch; his sense of discipline ensured the tidiest campaign office you’ll ever see with everything in its place and no panic searches for GOTV sheets as volunteers line up waiting; his sense of humour helped people through the tougher times when they’d had a bad knock or were beginning to tire; and his self-styled ‘after action reports’ which allowed time and space for a proper group debrief, allowing volunteers to learn – semi-formally – from each other.

Internally and externally the campaign understood people and sought to build strong relationships. Relationships that it could then request something of. Alongside the mantra of Respect, Empower, Include, the campaign was frank in its assessment that ‘we build relationships because they are the only way to win’ and it didn’t seek to limit these relationships to its stalwarts. Everyone was not just welcome, but actively pursued to join the fold and trained in what they were doing.

Some Labour supporters will have been active in one seat all their lives; others will have campaigned in different areas of the country. Falling into the latter camp, I know there is some excellent campaigning going on in the Labour Party. But I also know, sadly, that (and not always without reason) the spread of our best campaigning ideas and methods is patchy.

The launch of three publications today will hopefully go some way to addressing this. They chronicle the experience of over 100 Young Fabian and Labour Staff Network members and others who took part in Obama’s campaign and offer ideas for Labour and union campaigns in the UK. From Ohio to Oxford Eastpresents the collective thoughts of the delegation and subsequent workshops and roundtables to offer practical suggestions for your campaigns. Lessons from the Obama campaign is a collection of individual articles written by grassroots participants from the UK. Lessons from the US union campaign for Obama brings together the methods of union campaigning in the US and presents a case for the Labour Party and trade unions to reassess the ways they work together in UK elections. No one is pretending that replication of Obama’s campaign is the golden egg we’ve been reaching out for. But these papers present some ideas that can make a difference.

What is exciting about the present is that it is the left in America who offer the ideas about organising campaigns for Labour to seize. The approach the Obama campaign took fits much better with the values of our movement than it does with our opponents.

We must consider how we interact with voters and each other, alter our attitude to trust, invest in people’s talents and develop them as individuals within our movement. In providing opportunity for all, within our big tent, we can be stronger together. As a party and as a nation.

Please click here for more information on the delegation and to download the publications. Let us know what you think – please comment below.

Adrian Prandle, International Officer, Young Fabian Executive

Additional event this week!

From Ohio to Oxford East
from 6pm, Thursday 30th April 2009
The Abbey pub, Westminster (1 Abbey Orchard Street, SW1P 2LU)

Following the hugely successful Young Fabian & Labour Staff Network delegation to Barack Obama’s campaign in Ohio last year, we are pleased to present three publications. These share the experience of the delegation and others who took part in the campaign, offering many ideas for your grassroots campaigning in the UK.

Please join members of the Young Fabians and Labour Staff Network for an informal drinks gathering at The Abbey pub on Thursday 30th April to mark Obama’s completion of 100 days in office and to discuss the publications.

Kindly RSVP if you intend to attend by emailing Adrian Prandle, International Officer, aprandle@youngfabians.org.uk. For more information on the delegation and to read the publications, please visit the Lessons from America page on the Young Fabian website.

Unions can mobilise to influence the issues the next election is fought over and its outcome

The union vote matters, more so than has been previously realised. 60% of union members in America said they voted for Obama. In the last general election in the UK, only 46% said they voted Labour. Where this was important in the US election where 12% of working people are union members, it is even more important in the UK where union density is more than double that, around 28%.

With a year to go before Gordon Brown must call a general election, these figures alone make a very strong case that of all the lessons the Obama campaign can teach the Labour Party, the most important might be to strengthen their work with the unions.

So what do unions, and the Labour Party in the UK have to learn from the Democrats and US unions?

I’ve worked with trade union officers from the UK and US, as well as Young Fabian colleagues, to put together a paper which I hope goes some way to answering that question.

To be published online here on Thursday 30th, the paper will follow the Wednesday night Young Fabians event: “Will there be a British Barack Obama?” and be part of our celebrations of Obama’s 100th day in office.

It will ask some tough questions of both the Labour Party and the unions, and encourage some of the changes that need to be made so we can work together as effectively as the Democrats and US unions did last year.

So before then, whether you’re a trade union or Labour Party activist, what do you think we can do to work better together in your local area?