No Way To Make A Living » trade union

Ever Get The Feeling You’re Being ‘TUPE’d’?

Ewen Speed — Tue, 01 May 2012 10:54:55 +0000

The 2012 Health and Social Care Act (HSC) marks the de-regulation of primary health care in England. Much of the critical response to the legislation has been concerned with the implications for patients: what will the reforms mean for the broad political commitment to providing free universal healthcare? The prognosis for the NHS is not good but there is a faint glimmer of hope, given the high esteem in which it is held by the electorate. The popular commitment to the NHS as a social good is still strong. There is, however, a far more immediate threat to the everyday working of the NHS that needs to be considered — NHS staff and the practice of TUPE’ing. The NHS as a health service is not just a social good; it is a collective social good. It cannot be separated from its staff and their conditions of employment, but this is exactly what the Coalition government is currently doing.

Under the terms of the 2012 Act, ‘any qualified provider’ (AQP) can submit a tender to the local Clinical Commissioning Group to provide healthcare services. Since the act was passed in March, Serco, acting as AQP, have been awarded a £140 million contract to provide Community Services in Suffolk. Similarly, and without a trace of irony, Virgin Care will be providing Sexual Health Services in Milton Keynes. According to Unison, the Serco contract in Suffolk will result in 1000 staff being ‘TUPE’d’ from NHS contracts onto Serco contracts.

TUPE or Transfer of Undertakings [Protection of Employment] arrangements are nothing new. Ruane (2007) describes TUPE arrangements under New Labour PFI schemes, where many support services, such as hospital porters, previously provided by salaried NHS employees, came to be provided through private sector companies (and Serco has form here). Staff ended up performing exactly the same duties, but under different conditions of employment. For example, Ruane details how porters in Durham reported a £30-£40 per week shortfall in salary between TUPE and non-TUPE staff doing the same work. Between 2003 and 2005, and on the back of trade union mobilisation, agreement was reached over a public sector ‘two-tier code’. This code meant that any public sector employees who were TUPE’d to private sector organisations could not be offered a contract deemed to be ‘overall less favourable’ than their previous public sector contract (with the exception of pension provision). The two-tier code was implemented in healthcare through the ‘Agenda for Change and NHS Contractors Staff – a Joint Statement’, which was agreed in 2005.

On 13December 2010 the Cabinet Office withdrew the ‘two-tier’ code across all public sector service contracts, without discussion. It was replaced by six ‘Principles of Good Employment Practice’ These new principles are voluntary and have not been negotiated between government, employees, employers and trade unions as the two-tier code was. The requirement to avoid less favourable conditions is replaced by a commitment to ‘fair and reasonable terms and conditions’, such that;

Where a supplier employs new entrants that sit alongside former public sector workers, new entrants should have fair and reasonable pay, terms and conditions. Suppliers should consult with their recognised trade unions on the terms and conditions to be offered to new entrants.

The implications of this change, in light of the AQP legislation and the bun-fight that de-regulated NHS provision is quickly becoming, are stark and immediate. The NHS, as a collective social good, is constituted as much by its staff — by what it does for its staff and what it garners from its staff in return — as it is by a commitment to universal health care, free at the point of need. The latter isn’t possible without the former. Such is the strength of feeling for these principles of free access to healthcare, that attempts at their reform would be politically unsustainable. Staff are altogether a softer, more indirect and more politically sustainable target. The withdrawal of the two-tier code coupled to the opening up of healthcare to any qualified provider, (and the consequent privatisation and transfer of large numbers of NHS staff) is a far more immediate threat to the future of the NHS than the carve up of primary care that is currently dominating the debate. The implications of this privatisation of staff for the future of the NHS are far more invidious than people realise. There is a very clear danger that the NHS becomes nothing more than a brand, alongside Serco, Virgin Care and others. Once this happens, what becomes of the commitment to free universal healthcare as a collective social good? I would argue the situation becomes terminal.

Reference

Ruane, S. (2007) ‘Acts of distrust? Support workers experiences in PFI hospital schemes’, 75–92, in G. Mooney and A. Law (eds.) (2007) New Labour/Hard Labour? Restructuring and resistance inside the welfare industry , Bristol: The Policy Press.

Motor City on Strike

Lynne Pettinger — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 13:55:07 +0000

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) has been on strike for 19 weeks now. This is not Detroit’s first experience of conflict between capital and labour: after all, this is the city where Henry Ford learned how to control dissatisfaction and labour turnover, where Ford — like GM and Chrysler — have spent years managing layoffs and short production. And it’s the city where Jimmy Hoffa ran the Teamsters as tightly as any avaricious CEO ever ran a corporation. The strike makes for an interesting test of any committed trade unionist’s stomach for dispute.

Motown was Detroit’s music factory applying production line techniques, and Berry Gordy certainly had a firm hold on hiring and firing (as Florence Ballard from the Supremes and David Ruffin from the Temptations learned). But it’s the Orchestra where the conflict between management, labour and culture has come to a head. The strike is over pay, and the musicians have a struggle on to justify their claims to the city, and to their employer — a not-for-profit organisation financed to a large extent by philanthropy. Both endowments and philanthropic gifts have dropped off in the recession and the DSO is in crisis. Spending cuts are needed to keep the organisation afloat. Relying on the gifts of philanthro-capitalism to pay for a city’s culture has its risks (take note, ye promoters of the Big Society in the UK). As Linsey McGoey points out (forthcoming), the financiers in the recent financial crisis have all too promptly claimed that the best solution to a breakdown in market provision is more market provision: manifested in this instance making work flexible by changing pay structures.

All agree on the need to cut pay, but the size of the cut is up in the air. The numbers involved make for uncomfortable reading: they’re negotiating over its size — should that be 30% 15% 10% to a current guaranteed basic pay of over $100,000? This is skilled work requiring dedication and training, and the musician’s labour market is not a local Detroit market but a global one: the DSO is competing with the LSO and the BSO, and it will want to cherry pick the brightest from Venezuela’s El Sistema youth orchestra programme. Still, in a city of worklessness (an unemployment rate of 11.1% in Dec 2011, according to US Bureau of Labour Force statistics, and an average household income of $26,000 according to 2009 figures), the citizens of Detroit can be forgiven for getting a bit uppity with the striking timpanists: by local standards, they’re still raking it in, and whilst they may be a global elite, they live and work in the city.

Let’s agree that the post-industrial city’s pride needs roses as well as bread. But shiny limos dropping manicured wealth at the door of The Max does little for community cohesion; it’s just an elite workforce meeting a wealthy audience. The stumbling block in the dispute is about community cohesion: how to pay for outreach work. The musicians argue that the £2million in gift income earmarked for outreach should top up basic pay regardless of what each musician contributes to outreach, keeping all workers on the same conditions. The management want this to be a gig fee — a bit of motivation to do community work. Piece rates, if you like.
Both positions recognise that the elite workforce should recognise a commitment to the local. Personally, I don’t mind that Mahler’s been cancelled again, but I would like to know that ‘Peter and the Wolf’ is back on in a local school. This is what grounds the DSO as being Detroit: a localism that takes for granted that, from 1st violin to French horn, all are part of the same city, and will play where they can without extra financial motivation. And it seems to me that the musicians’ position, which avoids earmarking income to outgoings and embeds community work as the norm, not the added extra, is the way to guarantee this.

References

McGoey, L. (forthcoming) ‘The End(s) of Self-Interest’.

The Damage of the Strike

Lynne Pettinger — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:29:36 +0000

Flight attendants are an extraordinarily popular subject of study (Hochschild, 1983; Taylor and Tyler, 2000; Williams, 2003). Research focuses on the emotional labour and body work involved, as Dawn highlighted recently. The customer here is a powerful, but shadowy figure, who extracts and deserves service, and whom the cabin crew must please. These academic concerns are some way from the story of the ongoing British Airways dispute between management and unionised workers over different cost-cutting measures, and the manner through which negotiations are taking place. Given long-standing tensions between BA and its workforce (at least since the Gate Gourmet confrontations), it’s hardly surprising to hear the discussions are strained.

What’s notable about the reporting of the dispute is who is imagined to be damaged by strike action: it is you, my reader and telly watcher, you the imagined, eternal and all-important consumer. You are no longer a shadowy presence; you have had your honeymoon plans destroyed. Whilst the workforce are specified by the fact of their employment for BA, you the consumer are everyman, and you the consumer ought not be disadvantaged by those pesky strikers. There is no hint that you are also a worker.

Casablanca Airport by John Spooner

The BA dispute — and the political interventions provoked by it — has broader implications for discussions of pay and working conditions than just this case. It influences the landscape in which further discussions and decisions about labour law and labour rights are made, and relates to political sensitivity to the consumer the worker, to the power of management and the privileged status afforded to protecting the brand. The consumer is not the only universal figure in our social life. We are workers, too.

References

Hochschild, A. (1983) The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. London: University of California Press.
Taylor, S. And Tyler, M. (2000) ‘Emotional labour and sexual difference in the airline industry’. Work, Employment and Society. 14:77–95.
Williams C. (2003) ‘Sky service: the demands of emotional labour in the airline industry’. Gender, Work and Organization. 10 (5) 513–550.

John Spooner photographs used under creative commons license