One of the largest changes I
witnessed in a quarter century as a UNISON Branch Secretary in inner London has
been the emergency of agency employment as a major feature of daily live in
local government. Although in the economy as a whole many agency workers form a
lower-paid, less secure “super-exploited” sector of the workforce, in London
local government, agency employment has grown in large part to carry out
higher-paid roles (where local government pay is not competitive).
There is very little
research evidence on the use of agency staff in local government, and even wide
variations in estimates of the numbers of agency workers, based upon different methodologies
used to derive different estimates. Recent research for the Government by
the National Institute for Economic and Social Research concluded that;
“The public sector saw a 17 per cent decrease in the
use of temporary agency staff, falling from 56,080 in 2007 to 46,336 in 2010.
It then demonstrated significant recovery, with 71,272 identified in 2015. This
increase in temporary agency staff has been in context of overall decline in
non-permanent employment.”
Certainly, however, use of
agency workers in London local government is proportionately higher than across
the public sector as a whole – and is particularly high at senior levels and
among certain hard to recruit professional groups.
Agency workers benefit from
most of the conditions of employment which we have negotiated for employees
because of the Agency Worker
Regulations, but union density among agency workers is very low – and agency
workers have no security of employment. This part of the local government
workforce largely forms a “wild west” beyond the reach of our collective
bargaining (where highly paid “interims” often negotiate their own rates of pay
individually in circumstances where they have an advantage over those with whom
they negotiate).
It is little consolation
that the persistence of high levels of agency working reveals as much about the
lack of control which the senior management of employing organisations have
over their own organisation as it reveals about the lack of control which trade
unions have over an important segment of the workforce.
Now, because of tax changes
which will impact almost all agency workers in local government (bringing tax
payments into line with those made by employees) a significant chunk of the
local government workforce face a reduction in take home pay in April, compared
to March, of up
to 30%.
Although these changes
are – on the face of it – quite reasonable, both because agency workers should
pay the same tax and national insurance contributions as employees and because
organisations funded from taxation ought not to collude with tax avoidance,
they will create pressure (from agency workers) for increases in hourly rates.
Chickens are coming home to
roost for the local government employers who lobbied for these changes
(correctly in the long term since the tax advantages of agency employment were
one of the obstacles to stabilising the workforce in critical areas, including
children’s social care).
For the trade unions, who
have found ourselves unable to bargain effectively to improve local government
pay for more than a decade now, the prospect of large increases in hourly rates
for a significant number of agency workers (who form a substantial, and
relatively well-paid, minority of the workforce in a number of authorities) may
be a last chance for relevance on the question of pay.
There, of course, is no
prospect whatsoever that UNISON, under its present leadership, will be willing
(never mind able) to mobilise industrial action at national – or even Regional –
level in the foreseeable future (and this would have been true even without the
Trade Union Act).
However, UNISON branches in local government can mobilise political pressure
upon employers to match any increases given to high paid agency staff for lower
paid employees – and Labour Party members can support such pressure on Labour
local authorities in particular.
If any significant number of
highly paid “interims” in local government are granted increases in hourly
rates to compensate them for having to pay the same rate of tax as employees,
and the trade unions remain silent in response, then we will have acknowledged
that trade unions no longer have a meaningful role in setting pay in what has
for some years been the largest
collective bargaining unit in the economy.
Let’s hope that is not what
happens.
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