Motion no: 37
Under the cover of ‘austerity’ many governments have seized the opportunity to advance the neo-liberal agenda and slash public services, public employment and the provision of services. In consequence, living standards have dropped for the mass of the people, wealth has increased for the tiny minority, inequality has accelerated and the markers of civilised society are being systematically destroyed. Austerity, far from reversing the recession, has exacerbated it.
The policy of driving down wages and benefits reduces demand in the economy, which has an adverse knock-on effect of reducing consumption of the products and services of all enterprises. It also deprives the government of tax revenues with obvious consequences.
To halt the destructive race to the bottom that would impair economic recovery conference calls on the incoming NIC to examine the introduction of collective bargaining as a way of reducing inequality, enhancing employee voice in the workplace, and raising wages and generally improving terms and conditions of employment. Similar initiatives having been adopted by governments of all political stripes across the world over the last hundred years, in response to economic crises such as the one we are now encountering.
The UK was first in the development of collective bargaining (from 1917 to 1921, and from 1934 to 1979), and then in the attack on collective bargaining from 1980 until today. Historical statistics demonstrate that the decline in collective bargaining coverage in the UK is mirrored by the growth in inequality.
Conference also notes that the promotion of collective bargaining is a requirement of international law imposed by a series of Treaties ratified by the UK and therefore binding on it.
The aim would be to create a framework of sectoral bargaining arrangements to regulate terms and conditions of employment which would set minimum standards for the sector as a whole covering terms and conditions of employment for the sector as a whole (wages, overtime and shift rates, hours of work, holidays, sick leave, maternity and paternity leave, and so on) as well as other matters such as health and safety, workforce planning, training, apprenticeships, skills and productivity and pensions. They could also develop procedures for the resolution of disputes both collective and individual, allowing an opportunity for workplace problems to be resolved without the need to seek redress before the courts and tribunals.
Conference calls on the incoming NIC to consider the trade union movement’s past experience of collective bargaining, existing agreements, as well as considering models operating in other countries, with a view to producing a proposal for the introduction of collective bargaining arrangements for relevant sectors.
Although industry-wide collective bargaining is essential to the ambition for economic growth, reflation and social justice, the right to collective bargaining must be underpinned by other fundamental labour rights: the right to organise and the right to strike. Therefore, conference also calls on the incoming NIC to reinvigorate the campaign for the repeal of the anti-trade union legislation introduced by UK governments from 1980 to 1993.
