Wednesday 12 October 2016

United?

All the companies I worked for, in the public and private sectors, wanted to be considered a "good employer". I wonder what the trade unions would say about an employer in which:

  • Many women working for it are unhappy with the way it has dealt with allegations of harassment, bullying and other complaints 
  • Over half of female officers questioned by researchers have raised bullying or harassment concerns and half of those did not believe the issue was handled well 
  • One in six have submitted formal grievances (three quarters of those were bullying or harassment). In cases supposedly resolved, half were unhappy at the outcome.
What awful employer is this? Well, actually, it's the trade union Unite.

The findings came after a female former Unite employee, Sally Nailard, had a sexual harassment and sexual discrimination related constructive dismissal case against Unite upheld last week. She claimed she had been subjected to a 2 year campaign of lewd and aggressive comments by Unite shop stewards who wanted to force her out of her role as a Unite regional officer at Heathrow.

To be fair to Unite, they presumably realise they have a problem as they commissioned the survey, though maybe they thought it would give them a clean bill of health. They surveyed 88 female officers and almost 70% said they had experienced hostility at work, with nearly 40% saying they had been frightened at some point. Half of those said they had suffered verbal abuse, with almost one in four saying it was of a sexual nature.  A fifth of female Unite officers have taken time off work with stress  in the past 18 Months.

Wow! These stats are horrendous and at least an order of magnitude worse than anything I experienced in 4 decades in industry and business.

Seven in ten said they mainly experienced hostility from members. Unite stresses these are not under their control. No, but I thought they were meant to be, er, "brothers" in old trade union speak? And don't plenty of employees in the public and private sector have to deal with people not under the control of the organisation - like customers, patients, or the general public? Presumably Unite doesn't equip its employees to deal with these situations - or maybe Unite members specialise in being particularly hostile, including to their union officers?

In all organisations the culture is either what it's been for ages or one that has been inculcated by the management. Who would have thought that an organisation run by a bruiser like Len McCluskey would turn out to be ridden with bullying and harassment?

Not exactly a surprise? Actually I am surprised at the horrendous extent of the problems, even though the Labour movement is not exactly the gentlest of environments at the moment. From the tone of this post and my digs at the RMT (10 October and 13 August) it might surprise some to know that I believe in trade unions. Indeed, I was a union member for more than half my career (and a representative for several years) until it became incompatible with management responsibilities. Unions can make a hugely positive contribution to the success of an organisation and therefore its members who are employees there. This tends not to happen when the union thinks it can exert political pressure on the management, or go direct to a public sector "shareholder". In train operating companies the unions see the current franchise management as a temporary presence that they can play for time. In contrast in the private sector there is much more likely to be a shared imperative to satisfy customers and ensure the company flourishes to the benefit of everyone.

Be that as it may, Unite needs to put its own house in order before it is in any position to do its job properly and represent its members effectively.

Source: the Unite internal report has not been published but was leaked and several newspapers and websites including The Sunday Times and The Guardian covered the story. The report is titled Women in Unite and has been under consideration by Unite management for 4 months. I couldn't find any reference to it or indeed Sally Nailard on Unite's website.




1 comment:

  1. Sadly Phil, as someone who served as a trade union officer for around 30 years, I am not surprised by the problems of Unite. For reasons I can't quite get my head around trade unions are often seen to be poor employers in the UK. For what it is worth I put it down to a minority of those who aspire to be their leaders because they seem quite unsuitable for such positions!

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