Solidarity and the Gig Economy – by Peter Hall-Jones

Solidarity and the gig economy

by Peter Hall-Jones
for the New Unionism Network

It’s a credit to the tireless efforts of Professor Guy Standing that the word ‘precariat’ has made its way into most English dictionaries. In case you’re not up to speed (and who is these days?) it means: “the class of people who are poor and do not have secure jobs” (Cambridge Dictionary). Sure, there has been a bit of debate around whether this group really constitutes a separate ‘class’, but nobody disputes that the phenomenon itself is very real.

Almost 40% of young workers in the OECD are in non-standard work, such as contract or temporary work, or involuntary part-time employment (more). At global level more than 60% of workers, predominantly women, are in temporary, part-time or short-term jobs in which wages are falling (ILO 2015).  And of the top 20 global employers in 2017, five are outsourcing and ‘workforce solutions’ companies (more).

In the twenty-first century Dolly Parton’s ‘Nine to Five’ just doesn’t work as an anthem anymore.

Naturally, the English language being what it is, we have a range of apolitical synonyms for the word ‘precariat’. Workers who survive by performing a series of temporary jobs, and/or juggle bits and pieces of contract work, are called ‘casuals’ or ‘freelancers’ or even ‘micro-entrepreneurs’. Their stamping ground is ‘the gig economy’. It’s all very rock’n’roll. Being your own boss, meeting endless new people, wide horizons, flexible hours, maximum variety… what’s not to like? In fact, there is a lot of research to suggest that the majority of such independent workers – in the USA and Europe at least – have ‘chosen’ to work this way (eg McKinsey Global 2016).

At this point you might like to reflect for a moment upon the use of the word ‘choice’ in industrial relations. I was one of a generation who ‘chose’ to go on the dole in New Zealand in the 1980s. In reality, the employment market had collapsed around our ears. There were no jobs for us to go to. The only real choice we had was whether or not to interpret our situation in a cheerful light.

Anyway, choice or no choice, all this is about to change.

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Fair Work: Union Made

Following on from discussions with network members last year, we’ve been talking with the good folk at LabourStart about the creation of a new organisation: provisionally named The Fair Work Foundation. This body would aim to address the problem of weak or fraudulent labour standards. It would do so in two ways:

1) Fair Work Certified Standards
The Foundation would evaluate the labour standards conditions and auditing practices of private standards organizations. This would be done with an aim to certifying those that represent effective, good faith attempts to positively encourage and facilitate independent worker organization and collective bargaining.

2) Fair Work: Union Made
The Foundation would establish a new social label to certify that the workers who produce a labelled product or service do so in a unionized workplace where wages and conditions of employment are set via collective bargaining.

While these two initiatives cannot substitute for robust labour law, we believe they could be important as a means of promoting collective industrial relations. We invite all members of the Network to read of this proposal, drafted by member Dr Conor Cradden, and let us know what you think. Better still, let us know if you’d like to be involved in making it happen.

 

Global Unionism: The Occupational Citizenship Model

This is the final in our series on how global unions might be built. In it, the author argues for a rejuvenated form of solidarity built around occupation. Industrial unions began to replace guilds and friendly societies during the first wave of new unionism – starting towards the end of the 19th century. The labour movement may have lost something critical along the way. Look at the way we talk about work — people do jobs; but people are occupations. The author argues: “…we need to start from the principle that what we do and seek to do is more important than who we do it for.” As we have seen elsewhere in this series (see here, for instance) a revived focus on occupation could be constructed as an added dimension to existing union activity and structures — it need not require any major reconfiguration. The benefits to working people are obvious, as we have seen with professional associations and support networks. But a new approach based on occupational citizenship might also help us address some of the most pressing problems we face:

• How do we organize and bargain across borders in an age of globalization?

• How do we organize “the precariat” – that rapidly growing class of workers who come and go before unions can reach them?

• How do we rebuilt solidarity and influence in an age where many unions are struggling just to sustain themselves?

 

Fair Work / Union Made – a new global standard?

This article proposes the creation of a new international sustainability standard certifying that wages and working conditions are set through ongoing processes of good faith collective bargaining. Businesses and unions that comply with the standard will be entitled to apply the ‘Fair Work: Union Made’ label to their products and services. The authors argue that while such a voluntary standard cannot substitute for robust collective and individual labour law, it is likely to be an effective means of promoting collective industrial relations.

If you are interested in being part of a small team to take this idea further, please contact communications@newunionism.net.

 

Global Unionism: The Social Network Model

The network is the vanguard.
Dan Gallin, Chair of the Global Labour Institute

The union movement and FaceBook are about the same size, as of October 2012. That’s about one billion members, or one seventh of the world’s population[1]. It’s a milestone that has attracted very little attention because, frankly, the comparison ends there.

But why?

In this discussion the author argues for a new type of social networking as a necessary complement to our organized structures. This new networking needs to protect the user while promoting openness. Adding such a layer to our existing model of unionism would create a horizontal axis, and bring tremendous new strength to existing vertical structures.

 

Employment relations quality assurance

It’s not enough to produce widgets, we must produce quality widgets that can be sold for a profit. This expectation applies across the board — to the service industries as well as commodity production. However, “quality” is a notoriously elusive concept[i]. For this reason blue collar workers (and an increasing share of white collar workers) have grown accustomed to the checklists and graphs that come with quality assurance. Here’s an interesting idea: what if we extended quality assurance processes to employment relations?

 

Unions and job satisfaction

What makes a good job? And is it in management’s interests, as well as the union’s, to try and make jobs better?

Job satisfaction was once a hot topic in academia. From the 1960’s through till the late 1980’s, management theorists looked at the question from every angle, trying to find ways to create a contented labour force. By this, they meant: “one less concerned with money rewards and less inclined to  unionise[i]”. Researchers expected to find a strong correlation between job satisfaction and productivity. However, when this proved elusive, research funding dried up. More recently, a bunch of new research has helped the democratic labour movement better understand what workers want, and how we can deliver it.