Patricia Hewitt, Trade and Industry Secretary, announced on March 24 a major new project to stamp out bullying and discrimination at work. The trade union Amicus will lead the £1.8m project, working with ten of Britain’s biggest employers to develop practical guidance to help all employers tackle bullying. The employers include British Aerospace, Royal Mail, Legal and General, BT and Remploy. Half of the project’s funding will come from the DTI’s Strategic Partnership Fund. The project will provide support, advice and training to organisations trying to deal with bullying by:
training employees as counsellors and investigators of bullying and harassment;
divising and promoting a voluntary charter on ‘dignity at work’;
promoting examples of excellent employers in the UK and lessons to learn;
producing a benchmarking tool enabling organisations to measure their success in achieving dignity;
The CBI is pressing ministers to tighten up the rules on the EU’s working time directive. The CBI is content with a redraft of the UK legislation to prevent employers from duping staff into signing the opt-out against their will. However, the business lobby group is concerned that proposals from Brussels to extend reporting requirements so that employers have to record the hours of staff who opt out of the working time directive -estimated at a fifth of private sector workers in Britain – would increase record keeping costs by up to a third. It also claims that few employees want to lose the opt-out, with professional staff working long hours out of commitment to the job and others likely to be angered by the loss of overtime bonuses. CBI surveys show that 43% of firms make no use of the opt-out while the employers body claims that numbers working more than 48 hours a week fell every year between 1999 and 2002. Contact Richard Dodd, CBI, on &020 7395 8086 (http://www.cbi.org.uk)
Shying retirement
New research from Age Concern England indicates that Britain’s growth rate will shrink by about half a percentage point unless companies employ more older people. The Economic Contribution of Older People published on February 10 finds that if employers are unable or unwilling to absorb older workers, the labour force will be smaller. Meanwhile, more than half of people over 50 wish to carry on working beyond the state pension age, according to a report published by Reed Consulting and Age Concern London on March 22. Four-fifth’s of people in this age group, however, have been rejected by employers due to their age. Contact Liz Hickey, Age Concern London, on &020 8765 7516 (http://www.ageconcern.org.uk)
A healthy strategy
The Health and Safety Commission has published a statement on worker involvement and consultation. The statement, released on March 11, is the first of the early deliverables in the Commission’s Strategy for workplace health and safety in Great Britain to 2010 and beyond, which was published on February 23. It sets out:
the principles and evidence supporting the effectiveness of worker involvement and consultation;
examples of ways to secure it;
measures for joint working by social partners to achieve the statement’s aim of securing better worker involvement and consultation for the future.
The productivity and health of employees is suffering as a result of new technologies and the lack of privacy rights at work, which mean that bosses can monitor their employees constantly and secretly. The findings were made in Stop Snooping, a report in the March edition of the Trades Union Congress’ magazine, Hazards.
The TUC claims that companies in the UK and abroad are eavesdropping on telephone calls, measuring toilet breaks, monitoring e-mails, internet use and computer work and using CCTV, hidden cameras, smart cards and tracking devices to keep an eye on other work activities. Contact Ben Hurley, TUC, on &020 7467 1248 (http://www.tuc.org.uk)
Burning the midnight oil
Two-thirds of British business leaders are spending more than 55 hours a week at work and one in 20 work more than 60 hours a week, according to a new survey. The survey, published by accountants Grant Thornton on February 16, takes in the views of over 870 UK business leaders about their work patterns, the major causes of work-related stress and how widespread it is. The European Union’s working time directive stipulates that people should not work more than an average of 48 hours a week. The European Commission is considering strengthening the regulation, partly out of concern that British companies are exploiting an opt-out clause allowing workers to do more than 48 hours provided they have agreed it with employers. Contact Sharon Murphy, Grant Thornton, on &0870 991 2785 (http://www.grant-thornton.co.uk)
The price parT-timers pay
Part-time workers are often accused by co-workers of being lazy and face pay cuts much more severe than their reduced hours warrant, according to new research conducted by ICM for the Public and Commercial Services Union. A quarter of those surveyed doubt whether flexible and part time workers are as committed as their fulltime colleagues and resent their flexible hours. Fewer than half have been given the option to adopt flexible working hours and most people who took the option report that their pay and promotion prospects had been disproportionately affected. ICM interviewed 1007 randomly selected adults. Contact Alex Flynn, Public and Commercial Services Union, on &020 7801 2820 (http://www.pcs.org.uk)
Barely scraping by
More than 2.8 million pensioners are going back to work because they cannot survive on their retirement income, according to new research. Prudential‘s Retirement index, published on February 4, finds that one in four people are forced to return to work because they cannot cover the cost of living on the average annual pension household income of £14,648. The survey calculated that the newly retired see their income fall by £4,614. Nearly a quarter of a million pensioners also say they would commit or consider committing a crime to boost their income, nearly twice as many as the year before.
Meanwhile thousands of employers are raising retirement ages, making it likely that millions more people will have to keep working into their sixties, according to a survey published by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development on February 9. The findings suggest that 15 per cent of employers have already changed retirement ages in the past two years, while 17 per cent plan to do so in the next two years. In most cases, the changes mean that someone who retires at 60 will receive a less generous pension. The trade union Amicus says it is keen to maintain the right to retire at 60 and earlier, while campaigners fear employers could use this as an excuse to pay workers a lower pension if they retire before 70. Contact Steve Fisher, Prudential, on &020 7150 2619 (http://www.pru.co.uk); Gerwyn Davies, CIPD, on &020 8263 3365 (http://www.cipd.org.uk)
Pension predicament
Businesses will be required to consult employees over changes to pension schemes under a late addition to the pensions bill. Andrew Smith, the work and pensions secretary, told MPs that employers would have to discuss changes with recognised workplace consultation arrangements. This means employers will be obliged to give notice before closing an occupational pension fund. The main feature of the bill is a pension protection fund that will ensure retirement benefits are paid should an insolvent company wind up an employee fund. Contact DWP on &020 7238 0866 (http://www.dwp.gov.uk)
In brief
The Co-operative Bank is to create 500 call centre jobs in England rather than shifting jobs to India, it announced on February 5. Recruitment of call centre personnel is to take place in Manchester, Skelmersdale and Stockport. Contact Carolyn Hicks, Co-operative Bank, on &0161 829 4252 (http://www.co-operativebank.co.uk)
ASDA announced on February 19 that £15m worth of annual bonuses is to be shared among its 104,000 employees. ASDA became part of the Wal-Mart All-Colleague bonus scheme in 2000. This year’s payout, an average of £228.73 per colleague, takes the total paid to employees over four years to almost £50m. Contact ASDA on &0113 241 7829 (http://www.asda.co.uk)
The minimum wage is to rise by nearly a tenth (8%) to £4.85 an hour, Prime Minister Tony Blair confirmed on March 10. Mr Blair also indicated that a youth minimum wage would be set for 16 and 17 year olds. Contact DTI on &020 7215 5000(http://www.dti.gov.uk)
COMMENT:
As the tide of individual CSR measures in the workplace grows by the day, are the voices of employees in danger of being drowned out?
A trip down memory lane: nearly 30 years ago, the then Labour government set up a Royal Commission to look into industrial democracy, chaired by Alan Bullock. The great and good were recruited and got down to work. Their final report recommended equal numbers of trade union and management-appointed directors on the boards of large companies, with independent co-optees holding the balance. They also wanted directors to take equal account of workers’ and shareholders’ interests under company law. But then Mrs Thatcher got elected, and that was that.
What a contrast with today’s employment scene. Every issue of Briefing brings news of a flurry of micro-measures aimed at specific groups and at particular issues. In most industries, the unions are effectively sidelined and have been largely silent in the burgeoning CSR debate. The workforce has changed too: better qualified, more female, more flexible, and with more self-employment.
Government believes its role is confined to a set of supply side measures. Grand interventions such as prices and incomes policy or selective employment tax are inconceivable. Of course it still wants employers to do a whole raft of good things on the social agenda, but it knows that regulation and legislation is better aimed at preventing abuse than promoting positive action. The new Corporate Health and Safety Performance Index – which we feature later in this edition – is just the latest ‘voluntary’ initiative. The age of Bullock seems like the age of the dinosaurs.
But Bullock raised an issue that remains very relevant, namely how to take account of employees’ issues and interests, and balance them against other stakeholders like investors. He wanted to institutionalise it. Employees these days are much consulted and surveyed, but it’s employers who decide about the ‘mix and match’ from the array of CSR options in the workplace.
However, just think about the biggest shift of resources from employees to shareholders in the last decade – the virtual ending of final salary pension schemes. Would that have slipped away quite so easily, if employees had had representation at board level?
COMMENTS