Issues of ethics in the voluntary sector – how trade unionism can help

A voluntary sector worker explains the shift to corporate style working in the third sector and how employees and staff loose out.

I’m focused on trying to build the labour movement in the voluntary sector. That is where i work, so that’s where i need to get involved with a union.

Like most of voluntary sector, the association I am employed by does not recognise a union. There is quite a routine bullying attitude of management, they demand you work well above your role and wage, there is nepotism in advancement. I am working in a front line service (homelessness) but spend most time recording and producing paperwork, stats to meet targets, referral forms etc etc.

We are government funded but the contracts are dished out to all manner of inappropriate “companies”. For many years the voluntary sector has become more and more corporate and business orientated. They act as private “companies” and make a “surplus” not a profit.

There is a massive alienation to be working in a low paid public funded service, to be motivated by a social conscience to assist the homeless yet have a bullying management that want to cut your terms and conditions, wages, job to maintain their “surplus”. Managers that insist you do the work to keep the contracts and jump through the mind numbing hoops of funding requirements.

You might think a not for profit organisation who have resources might say, we’re making money here, we have an overall surplus so we will cross subsidise our services for homeless, or refugees, people with mental health issues.

If there is such an association currently doing this then I’d love to hear about it.

The salvation Army have been co-operating with DWP to have workfare/forced labour workers to come and work for them for nothing! They are also restructuring, and announced a schedule of annual wage cuts for next three years!

Many workers in voluntary sector are alienated and have lots of issues they want to be taken up with management but there is no culture of free speech or of people challenging the way things are run.

The voluntary sector has been with us for 30 + years now and it is growing bigger and bigger. Its success is based on the closure and privitisation of public services. Tendering out services is now the main system in Council Social Services, NHS commissioning and in other state funding.

The present round of cuts means paying less for the same contracts.

How will these cuts be met in the voluntary sector?

Because they do not recognise a union the way the cuts are implimented is entirely at these “companies” managers decision. Many are slashing pay and conditions, reducing sick pay, redundancy provision. New starters start with ever worse terms and conditions. Some like “Turning Point” and “Futures Directions”, Swanswell Trust, St Basils and many others are sacking their workforce and re-employing on new, much worse terms and conditions. Nice employers these charities!

The left have got to stop thinking of this sector as woolie and liberal, maybe a bit radical because many of the “companies” used to be progressive campaigning organisations.

This is not the situation now, these are business’s and they act like business’s. They are profiting from being un-unionised at the expense of their workforces. They do not exist to support the vulnerable, they exist to fulfill a commercial contract with public funding and to win more contracts.

For Example: housing associations are funded by government, and collect (increasing) rents and have private investment. They can raise business bonds, they are given credit ratings and fight to retain “triple A” ratings.

Not surprisingly they have little real interest in what they term their “customers”, their interest is to remain profitable, continue to grow bigger, more mergers, more economic weight, more managers on fat wages, more directors on outrageous wages like £150k.

Where workers have started to struggle to have a union recognised in the voluntary sector, they face a lot of obstacles. The left should assist them to overcome these difficulties and use what weight it has within the Labour Movement to support workers unionisation campaigns.

We have to fight to bring standards up for all workers in the social support / social care sector whether employed by private, voluntary or public sector providers. There should be standard rates of pay, terms and conditions, rights at work, recognition of unions etc. Only by achieving this can workers stop the race to the bottom. Service providers should not be competing on the basis of our pay and conditions. This is not competition, its a bosses charter., its sheer exploitation. Its totally unfair on workers in this sector whose labour is diminished and valued less and less.

Getting organised is difficult and involves risking your job. There is such a culture of fear of reprisal and such a fear of losing your job (in a period of such high unemployment) that many want change, would support having a recognised union , .. . . but are scared.

Trying to impose on the bullying culture, a new aspect of standing up for ourselves, having solidarity as workers, joining a union, building the union, getting the union to challenge the cuts taking place, getting trained and building a network of stewards and health and safety reps etc. Its quite a task. You have to fear that as this becomes effective a senior manager may finger you for redundancy, find a “capability” issue, question your sickness record.

Its hard as an individual, working in a climate of fear, to not also feel that fear. It is perhaps, a modern equivalent of the pioneering trade unionists. The difference should be that the existing weight of the Labour Movement will be brought to bear on the Voluntary sector. That there are existing resources and experience that will combat these difficulties.

Well so far, this is not really the case in my experience.

Sorry to all for using the word bureaucracy, but the trade union bureaucracy remains powerful. In unions like UNISON, GMB, the bureaucracy remains all powerful, in unison it has expelled or suspended left activists.

The officials in the unions concerned want to recruit in the voluntary sector but they do not want to give birth to a radical rank and file in the voluntary sector. Workers breaking from fear and reaction (of their employment) tend to get radical. Workers who work in a low pay sector because they want to do socially useful work are angry too to see the essential services they deliver being cut by the council and government.

This makes the union nervous.

UNISON fairly openly says it needs to recruit in the voluntary sector. As more and more of its members are made redundant by councils its revenue is reduced. Even due to wage cuts (in real terms) the subs are reduced!

If it goes on like this some union bureaucrats might be made redundant !!!!!

UNITE and GMB are also involved. UNISON and UNITE even have a dispute between them over recognising both unions.

Workers in the voluntary sector need the involvement of the left to assist them in developing the knowledge and skills to both build a union, fight to have it recognised and for its members to have a say it what the union does.

As these unions are being often built from scratch it means the left assisting those willing to risk all and become a union activist with ideas, tactics, knowing which union edicts it can ignore and those that are serious enough to get ourselves expelled.

There is the bureaucracy and then also the branch. They can be similar or they can be a source of support. It varies.

Some say we need to stop using archaic terms. Well in terms of the task of reclaiming the unions and making them fight, no, actually many of us need to learn about the mysterious ways of the unions and how we can push the struggle forward through the unions. We need to learn about the standing orders, branch rules, national rules, regulations that will be used to put obstacles in our way.

In the voluntary sector, because so many of us have not worked in a unionised workplace, we need to learn how to work in the unions and how to win unionisation. The left should try to relate to these kind of struggles that are going on.