Tech innovators start to see old-fashioned benefits of collective bargaining

After a long industrial campaign, Amazon workers in Italy have persuaded their employer to reach an agreement with them. FILCAMS CGIL

Michael Walker, University of Technology Sydney
Disruption has been a defining buzzword of this decade, as companies in nearly all sectors find themselves challenged or supplanted as a result of the impact of technology. The beneficiaries of this disruption have mostly been newcomer enterprises – the Ubers and the Amazons – which have quickly grown to become part of everyday life.
Policymakers, reluctant to quash innovation, have taken a hands-off approach. But these innovators’ employment practices don’t appear to be so innovative. In recent times, however, some tech innovators have shown they aren’t allergic to bargaining with their workforce after all.
What’s driving this shift? It might be convenient for consumers but the gig employment model, with its arm’s-length relationship with its workforce, struggles to build organisational culture and relationships with customers. We see evidence of this in ongoing strife in companies such as Uber and Deliveroo.

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Read more: Gig economy businesses like Uber and Airtasker need to evolve to survive

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Now, though, major firms have begun to negotiate collective agreements with their workers.

Amazon in Italy

For the first time anywhere in the world, it was announced in May that Amazon had made an agreement with unions. The breakthrough took place in Italy, where Amazon and the FILCAMS CGIL union negotiated an agreement. It was endorsed by 70% of employees who voted on it.
The deal came into effect on June 17. It ensures fairness in scheduling and allocating weekend work, and reduces mandatory night shifts.
Amazon workers now get four consecutive free weekends out of every eight. Shifts alternate between Saturdays and Sundays, and they get 25% higher pay for working at night.

The Amazon warehouse and distribution centre in Piacenza, Italy, is now covered by a collective agreement with workers.

Digital media in the US

A growing number of digital news outlets have signed collective agreements with their writers over the last few years. The list includes Vice Media, ThinkProgress and the Huffington Post. All are now signed on to union contracts with the Writers Guild of America East.
In addition, Slate, Salon, MTV News and Fast Company recognise the Guild as a negotiating partner. Vox is negotiating its first union contract right now.
These contracts establish minimum salary and future pay rises, and set agreed payment for derivative republication of writers’ work. They also limit the power of management to fire employees at will.

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Read more: Why HuffPo and other 'new' media journalists are choosing unions

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A gig employer in Denmark

We have heard a lot about Uber, Deliveroo, Foodora and Airtasker and the problems created because they don’t treat their workers as employees. This means, among other things, they don’t provide the minimum wage or other basic employment standards. Airtasker has sought to address this by making undertakings to the peak union body in New South Wales.
By contrast, Danish employment platform Hilfr recently signed a collective agreement covering its workers, who provide cleaning services. Under the agreement, Hilfr’s workers will receive:

• a minimum wage equal to A$30 an hour
• pension contributions
• holiday pay
• sickness benefits.

The agreement was negotiated with Danish union 3F (United Federation of Danish Workers) and comes into effect on August 1.

Winds of change in Australia?

After years of decline, collective bargaining coverage in Australia has stabilised over the past 12 months.

These figures don’t include new agreements being made in the retail sector. These are set to add another 200,000 employees by the end of this year.
Meanwhile, the gig employment model faces the likelihood of increased regulation. The federal Labor Party has stated its intention to regulate gig employment if elected. Labor governments have starting doing so at state level.

• The Victorian government recently announced on-demand deliveries would be brought within the Owner Drivers and Forestry Contractors Act and couriers given the ability to bring claims before the Victorian Small Business Commission and the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.
• In New South Wales, the shadow minister for industrial relations, Adam Searle, announced that Labor intends, if elected, to introduce even broader protections for gig workers to “fill gaps” in the Fair Work Act.
• The Queensland government is considering options to extend workers’ compensation coverage to gig workers.

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Read more: Workers' compensation doesn't cover gig workers – here's a way to protect them

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Gig employers have a strong incentive to sit down and talk – it could make for an uncomfortable ride for them if workers’ entitlements continue to be imposed through political agitation followed by legislation.
Perhaps it won’t be long until we see one of these tech innovators put in place such an “innovative” agreement with its Australian workers.
Michael Walker, PhD candidate researching worker voice, University of Technology Sydney
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Members meeting to endorse the UTS Professional Staff Agreement

Summary

Despite a concerted push from Management, the new Agreement will see no loss of existing entitlements.  Positive gains for UTS Professional Staff include:

• ·         2%pa pay increase (paid twice-yearly as 1% in May and 1% in November)
• ·         Twice-yearly consultation meetings with University Management
• ·         20 paid days of Domestic Violence Leave
• ·         17% Supperannuation for all fixed-term staff from 2020
• ·         Reference to Working From Home Policy captured within the EA
• ·         Improvements to fixed-term and casual conversion
• ·         Extended Redeployment for Professional Staff HEW 7 and below (now 20 weeks)
• ·         Commitment to ongoing employment as the preferred mode of employment captured in EA
• ·         New post-restructure implementation review process added to Change Management
• ·         Increased Union training leave (now 10 days)
• ·         Non-gendered Primary Carer Leave replaces Maternity Leave
• ·         New Social Justice Leave category added to FACS Leave
• ·    Additional $500,000pa held in a central fund for “next-level” Professional Staff training and      development 

Why union members earn higher wages than their non-union colleagues

Craig MacMillan, Macquarie University; Daehoon Nahm, Macquarie University, and Michael Dobbie, Macquarie University
Over recent decades in Australia union membership has fallen from 40% of the workforce in 1990 to 15% in 2016 and so unions might seem less relevant in making a difference to what we earn. But our research finds that union members do earn higher wages per hour than non-union members.
This is because union members have more experience with their current employer, in their occupation and in the labour market generally, than non-union members.

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The study used data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey from 2001-2013 with a sample of 80,000 workers. It showed that male union workers earned 12% more than male non-union workers per hour and female union workers earned 18% more per hour than female non-union workers.
We explored whether these pay differences could be explained by whether or not the two groups had different characteristics such as formal education levels and various forms of labour market experience. In economics, the more knowledge and skills a worker has, the higher productivity and higher wages they’ll have.
However formal education didn’t seem to factor in as a decider of differences in wages between unionists and non-unionists in the study. Rather, these findings suggest that when unions negotiate collective agreements for members they are concerned about employment security, as well as wages and this is a deciding factor.

How unions add to workers’ experience

The study also revealed that unionists received a lower wage increase for each year of additional labour market experience. But because they accumulated more expertise their overall earnings were higher than their non-union counterparts.
These findings can be explained by unions’ willingness to trade-off wage increases for improvements in employment security. For example, during collective bargaining a union may propose that the employer impose no forced redundancies on the workforce for the life of the agreement. However, this will be costly for the firm as it will have to commit more resources to redeployment. As a result the employer may agree to this provision if the union agrees to a reduction in wage increases.
This could be because unions are interested in more than just higher wages, but also in employment stability and training opportunities. In fact, they may be willing to trade-off some short-term wage growth in return for employment security and training opportunities and accordingly higher wages in the longer-term.
This idea was confirmed in an earlier study we conducted. That study, also using HILDA survey data, found workers covered by a collective agreement (the majority negotiated by unions) had more workplace training (approximately 5% more). This is compared to workers covered by an individual agreement, which are mostly negotiated without any union involvement.

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Read more: They're the voice: how workers can be heard when unions are on the wane

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This finding is also consistent with data from the federal government about collective agreements formed between 2007 and 2009. This data found there were training initiatives in 80% of union negotiated agreements, compared to 52% of non-union agreements.
From our findings we think workers might be financing training opportunities by trading-off potential wage growth under collective agreements. But these workers can accumulate more skills and accordingly increase their productivity, giving them higher wages in the long-term.
Taken together these studies suggest that unions can get higher wages for their members, despite having less industrial muscle than they did in the past. It shows that unions need to focus on negotiating for improved employment security and training opportunities for workers and not simply for higher wages during bargaining for new collective agreements.
To remain relevant to Australian workers, unions need to have an effective voice on these matters.
Craig MacMillan, Lecturer in Economics, Macquarie University; Daehoon Nahm, Senior Lecturer - Department of Economics, Macquarie University, and Michael Dobbie, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Macquarie University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.