Received from: National Education Union, PCS, Unison, Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers
Motion 16 and amendments
Congress reaffirms the right for workers to bargain collectively on pay and
conditions with their employers and endorses the aspiration of extending this
bargaining beyond the issues of pay and conditions. Congress supports the
restoration of sector- and industry-wide collective bargaining machinery, in
particular in sectors characterised by small workplaces or weaker workplace
union organisation.
Congress believes that the introduction of such machinery should be accompanied by steps to improve and extend the rights of unions and their members to access and organise in the workplace, in order to ensure not only better pay and conditions but also higher union membership and more effective workplace organisation, representation and bargaining.
Sectoral collective bargaining needs to go alongside increasing union membership in the workplace. Congress agrees the TUC will campaign for effective trade union rights to access the workplace and for the union membership thresholds to trigger statutory recognition ballots to be reduced to 2 per cent of the workforce or 500 members.
Congress welcomes the Labour Party’s commitment to new sectoral bargaining machinery and affirms the TUC’s willingness to work together with Labour and other parties on promoting such arrangements accompanied by the other measures above.
Congress notes that the break-up of sectoral collective bargaining in the public sector, including the UK civil service, has led to pay segregation by gender and that a restoration of sectoral collective bargaining can play a positive role in reducing income inequalities and discriminatory pay gaps.
Congress agrees that such machinery should also be seen as a priority for sectors such as the schools sector where sector-wide pay and conditions have been undermined through privatisation, outsourcing and academisation and sector specific collective bargaining for teaching and support staff has been abolished in England and for teaching staff replaced by a discredited government-appointed pay review body whose recommendations are cut back or ignored. This should include re-establishing in England the School Support Staff Negotiating Body, put in place by the last Labour government but scrapped by the Tories.
Mover: National Education Union
Seconder: UNISON
Supporters: Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers,
Public and Commercial Services Union