Housing Associations and Charities that refuse to recognise Trade Unions are Human Rights Violators

This motion has been sent to the UNISON Community Conference next year by UNISON Housing Association branch. 

"This Community conference notes:-

That a number of UK Housing Associations and Charities do not recognise trade unions for collective bargaining.

Some of these employers are Union busters and have de-recognised trade unions, attacked union representatives and blacklisted union and safety activists.

The UN Charter of Human Rights, as well as International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions, makes it clear that it is an absolute human right of all employees not only to join a trade union but also to be protected by collective bargaining agreements over jobs, pay, terms and conditions.

Any employer that refuses to recognise trade unions and is hostile to union activists and organisers is committing human rights violations and must be treated as such.

Major UK Housing Associations and Charities have and continue to receive huge amounts of public money either in direct support, grants, benefits, subsidies, donations or taxable relief.

UNISON wants to work in partnership with employers to improve employee relations which we genuinely believe will benefit our clients, customers and workers. However we will not tolerate human rights abuses.

This Conference resolves

To call upon our SGE and UNISON Labour Link to support a campaign for all UK Housing Associations and Charities to recognise trade unions for collective bargaining. This campaign may involve taking legal industrial action if necessary in accordance with UNISON rules.

If any UK Housing Association or Charity refuses to recognise trade unions for the purposes of collective bargaining and victimises or blacklists activists and organisers then we call upon the SGE and UNISON Labour link to support campaigns within our rules in favour of recognition and against such victimisation and blacklisting.

If any Housing Association or Charity refuses to respect the human rights of our members to collective bargaining and victimised or blacklists union activists then we should as a last resort call upon the general public, local authorities and the Government to make it clear to these organisations that due to their failure to observe basic international human rights, they will review whether they are fit and proper organisations that they should work with and have procurement, partnership and other commercial arrangements with".

Join UNISON. Support at work

Great TV advert for UNISON. Support at work is really important, it is simply horrible to face redundancy or discipline hearings or action under sickness procedures etc on your own without trained independent representation.

But we need to also point out the crucial importance to workers of union collective bargaining over their pay, terms and conditions and restructures. All workers in this country have a human right to join a union and collectively bargain under the United Nations Charter on human rights

Union rights ARE an ESG issue!

            An intelligent and thought provoking post as ever by Capital Stewardship blogger Tom P here (and below) on the failure (I could be a little more direct) of the ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) industry to promote Labour rights. As someone who has an interest as the UNISON NEC member for the UK charitable and voluntary sector, I wonder how many of these organisations actually recognise trade unions for their own staff and have collective bargaining? Or realise if they don't - they are failing to follow the United Nations Global principles on human and Labour rights? 

By coincidence last week I attended a meeting of the Association of Member Nominated Trustees (AMNT) working group on their "Red Lines" initiative. Which is a new approach to pensions shareholder engagement and voting at Company AGMs. Labour rights and trade union recognition are accepted as key "Red Lines" - as important as environmental or corporate governance.

(Tom P) "I've blogged a little previously about what I see as a general failure of labour issues to make it very high up the ESG agenda. As someone who has worked with and for trade unions in different ways for much of my adult life I find this frustrating, particularly as it contrasts sharply with progress on environmental issues in responsible investment. So I thought I'd go into a bit more detail.

One of the things that troubles me is the apparent tolerance some people in responsible have for poor behaviour by companies on labour rights. I very much doubt this sort of behaviour would be tolerated in respect of other ESG issues. I think it is worth restating, as obvious as it should be, that labour rights are human rights. Therefore, where unions raise concerns about companies' not respecting labour rights this should not be seen as a "difference of opinion" between employer and employee, but a potential violation of human rights. Also, unions are very often able to provide specific breaches of labour law by companies. The consequences of such breaches vary considerably between jurisdictions but the key point is that companies are breaking the law, often repeatedly.

Seen in these terms, I question why investors do not take alleged labour rights violations more seriously. Aside from the danger in being seen as tolerating abuses of human rights, I would argue that investors should see this as a serious hazard warning. If a company is breaking the rules over and over even if you don't personally like/support unions you should be concerned about whether this is indicative of a wider management attitude.

However, for some reason this message doesn't seem to get through. I doubt a company that could be shown to have repeatedly violated environmental regulations would be given the benefit of the doubt by many ESG folks, but this does happen with labour rights. To take a real life example, imagine the reaction if a company stated that it would lobby aganst certain environmental standards because it was bad for business, and if it repeatedly used lawyers to frustrate attempts to make it more environmentally responsible. I think we know that most RI people would think this was intolerable.

Yet this is exactly what happens when unions try to organise within companies. It is far more acceptable in the ESG world for a company to oppose unionisation, even when this strays into alleged breaches of the law, than it is for it to decline to adhere to voluntary environmental initiatives or targets. I have even seen an asset manager with some ESG credibility report publicly that it supports a company's right to campaign against unionisation because it thinks this is in the interests of the business.

I genuinely get it that the working lives of retail workers, or dockers, or bus drivers are to most people in the the RI world a less interesting thing to look at than climate change, particularly if those workers live in developed countries and sound a bit thick. Engaging over these issues maybe doesn't have quite the same feeling that you are contributing to something important. But actually the ability of workers to bargain for a fair share is closely linked to inequality, surely quite an important societal issue.

It's a bad news story really: the decline of trade union strength is closely correlated with increased inequality, as an IMF paper pointed out last year. The effects might be two-fold, weaker unions mean that labour is less able to bargain for a fair share, but also reduce the countervailing power that once held corporate management in check. Is it any wonder that the US, with its weak labour law and numerous anti-union companies (and union-busting firms that advise them) is so unequal? So if you are concerned by inequality you should be concerned by companies that try to prevent or reverse unionisation.

Finally, I think it's important to flag up the issue of beneficiary interest and representation. I genuinely believe that RI policies and practices should reflect beneficiary concerns where possible.

There is a lack of good info on what beneficiaries really want to see in RI policies but some of the limited info we have suggests that they put more emphasis on basic employment-related issues than the ESG community as a whole does. If this is broadly correct this may be because they see a self-interest in it. We also know that beneficiaries want to get a decent return and are worried about getting ripped off. Therefore an RI policy that was generally rooted in beneficiaries' interests might have more to say about workplace terms and conditions on the one hand, and fees and charges on the other. To state the obvious we are long way from that, although this is broadly the territory that unions seek to occupy.

I do worry a bit that the priorities expressed in responsible investment can sometimes look like the liberalism of the well off and successful. We're very good at flying around the world to conferences and signing up to global initiatives. In contrast, bus drivers complaining about shift patterns or faulty heaters can seem rather dull. If you've never done a menial job, or struggled to get on at work, you may well consider some of the complaints that union members raise to be trivial, or whiny. But these are the people whose money makes responsible investment possible. Without their pensions you and me don't have jobs. I think they have a right to expect that their voice gets a better hearing than it does currently".

(hat tip chart to http://www.unionswork.us/)

Red Lines - How to start an Investment Governance Revolution

(this post was pulled in January since I didn't realise that we had to wait until formal launch of Red Lines which took place yesterday. I will post further on this "revolutionary" proposal)

Picture is from last weeks workshop on "Red Lines" run jointly with the AMNT (Association of Member Nominated Trustees) and UKSIF (United Kingdom Sustainable  Investment & Finance Forum)

AMNT co-chair Janice Turner talks about her "Red Lines" idea to the audience.

Pension funds are blamed for being partly responsible for the crash of 2008. As asset owners they were "asleep at the wheel" and did not take their responsibility seriously and allowed the banks and financial institutions to nearly destroy our economy and seriously damage our investments.

What "Red Lines" hopes to do is to allow all pension funds regardless of size assert their rights of ownership on the assets they own and are responsible for. Small pension funds do not have a voice even though they are estimated to own £300 billion of assets. Large pension funds can afford to engage with their fund managers and the companies they own but they always lose important votes at company AGMs since most fund managers interests are not aligned with asset owner interests.

In a telling phrase from AMNT activist Bill Trythall (on left of photo) there are "Armies without generals and generals without armies".
 
Janice compared the current arrangements with the electoral system in the 18th Century when only the rich and powerful had a vote.

What  "Red Lines" is about is small and large pension funds, as well as a wide range of other charitable and ethical funds, agreeing a common set of Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) beliefs and instructing their fund managers to vote in a certain way or explain why not.

The devil will be in the detail of course but it should not be beyond the wit of man or woman to agree a common set of voting instructions to fund managers on issues based, for example, on the UK Stewardship Code or the United Nations Compact on Human Rights.

If companies do not comply with "Red Lines" instructions without good reason then fund managers should vote against the Board at AGMs and if fund managers do not comply without good reason, then they should run the risk of being sacked by trustees.

After speeches there were various workshops on how to formulate and enable "Red Lines". It is at an early stage and is going to be a time consuming and difficult process to bring about but potentially "Red Lines" will indeed revolutionise governance practices and bring about more responsible ownership and accountability.