We spend more time working than doing anything else. The quality of our relationships at work is one of the most important sources of our wellbeing – as important as our relationships with family and friends. Employment gives meaning and structure to our lives as much as income, which when removed – say, through joblessness – plunges us into depression.
But all is not well in the world of work. People are excessively micromanaged, rarely made to feel appreciated and too often are poorly and unfairly rewarded, with job insecurity rife. Enforcement of labour law in all its dimensions, from unfair dismissal to safety standards, is weak and under-resourced. We may value work but, as wellbeing expert Professor Richard Layard finds, it is remarkably under-loved, only marginally more enjoyed than being ill. Change this and the dark mood that suffuses the country would be lifted, and also help trigger the much needed rise in productivity.
This deep disaffection sits behind both the junior doctors’ and this week’s London underground strike. Plainly, money is the prime driver of each, but scratch the surface and it is widespread dissatisfaction with working conditions that is fuelling the anger. Junior doctor starting salaries of £32,000, translating into hourly wage rates of £15, are too low, given the knowledge and responsibility entailed, especially as comparable salaries in other professions have soared. But the doctors are as concerned about their capacity to deliver patient care, given staffing and investment, at levels they deem necessary. The 95% vote for strike action in December was a stunning condemnation: in the round, the NHS is failing to offer a fair deal.
Something similar is behind the mood of the RMT strike in London this week – despite sister rail unions accepting the same pay offer last autumn. The union’s general secretary, Mick Lynch, says his members are incensed by the emergence of a two-tier workforce – a Transport for London (TfL) management offering staff a below-inflation wage deal, freezing pay bands, withdrawing travel benefits, while creating a large bonus pot to be distributed among themselves, with the commissioner accepting an 11% pay award. Individual bonuses in any organisation whose success depends on team effort are always divisive and toxic. On this evidence, TfL is part of a British management culture in which workplace fairness is far too low down the hierarchy of concerns, and personal remuneration too high. Nonetheless, the pain to be inflicted on Londoners this week is disproportionate to the offence: Lynch and his very left RMT executive will not get the support enjoyed by the doctors.
Trade unions have been at the receiving end of pernicious denigration since the 1960s. The idea of workers joining a union collectively to represent their interests, electing their leadership and at the limit withdrawing their labour together to pursue their joint interest or resolve a dispute, is noble and inspiring. Yet Britain had too many trade unions – in 1945 there were over 1,000 – typically with many competing for recruits on the same site or sector. And, importantly, they were excused from being sued for damages arising from a dispute. Negotiating pay deals that were neither susceptible to leapfrogging nor dislocated by strikes, especially in large manufacturing plants, was becoming impossible.
In 1969, the Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson, and his secretary of state for employment and productivity, Barbara Castle, resolved on change: the law must require employers to recognise trade unions, but trade unions must face financial consequences for breaking agreements – and there had to be a staged, independent process for managing disputes.
Hugh Scanlon and Jack Jones, the charismatic leaders of two of the UK’s biggest unions, resisted. This amounted to collaboration with “capital”, they declared, undermining the free collective bargaining that Labour had been founded to advance.
Wilson and Castle were forced into an ignominious retreat; so later was the Tory prime minister Edward Heath. When re-elected, Wilson tried again: trade unions and business should be co-partners, with unions sitting on company boards. Again the same resistance, with union leaders congratulating themselves on their irresistible power and refusal to collaborate with “capital”.
Trade union membership peaked at more than 13 million in 1979. But Margaret Thatcher would implement fierce anti-trade union law – splitting the Labour party in the process and accelerating a decline in union membership more rapid than in any other industrialised country.
The process has gone too far. Enfeebled unions have not led to a productivity and economic renaissance. Strong and effective trade unions, truly representing their members’ interests, partnering with business, turn out to be the necessary if insufficient condition to get good, fair, high-trust workplaces. In retrospect, Wilson and Castle were right: British capitalism would have had a very different character and the political right much less power had they succeeded.
The RMT leadership is heir to the worldview of Scanlon and Jones: unionism as a means to pursue class war. With three unions on the underground the destructive cocktail is complete. Partnering and joint problem-solving is not on the union leadership’s agenda – but they would say it is not on TfL’s either. Tragically, they would be right.
Nor is it on the government’s. In over 13 years, I cannot recollect one minister making the case for fair, high-trust workplaces built on partnership between management and unions – despite the evident progress this approach had in managing Covid. Yet that has to be the future. Keir Starmer’s Labour party, accused of general timidity, promises top to bottom reform of the labour market, doing what Wilson could not, in particular introducing mandatory fair pay collective bargaining agreements in every sector. Thus the RMT would have to abide by a common deal instead of freelancing on its own.
Most union members in 2024 have degrees or professional qualifications – rather like the junior doctors – and are more interested in partnering to create good workplaces than being the industrial wing of a proletarian revolution that never comes. Unions that genuinely reflect such an urge represent an opportunity to reinvent and grow trade unionism, and with it happier workplaces. If not this, what? Trade unionism founded on reflex opposition to capital is a proven dead end.
• Will Hutton is an Observer columnist
