Future pensions: the view from the NAPF mountain

A state pension worth around 1/3rd of average earnings to provide a robust floor of benefits, supplemented by a workplace pension built around auto-enrolment and mandatory contributions, the whole supervised by a new regulatory settlement based on a standing Retirement Savings Commission analogous to the existing Low Pay Commission.

That’s the vision of the National Association of Pension Funds, the industry body representing scheme sponsors, in Fit For the Future, a new report on pensions published yesterday (press release; full report). Praised by the TUC as offering ‘serious and constructive proposals for the future of pensions‘ there’s a lot in the report to commend, as well as some items for debate.

It’s hard to disagree with the NAPF’s view of the pensions landscape: workplace saving has fallen dramatically both in terms of numbers and in terms of the value to ordinary workers of the pensions generated there. Rightly, the NAPF doesn’t spend too long analysing how this situation has come to pass, but is oriented more towards what can be done to stop the decline and get the principle of workplace saving back on track.

There are many factors which help to account for why this situation has come to pass, as these pages have already argued; though it would be perhaps rather churlish in this context to remind that decisions to close schemes appear to stem largely from the unsympathetic and ruthless cost-cutting actions of scheme sponsors themselves. The Connect Sector of Prospect has some experience of negotiating alternatives where employers are looking to move away from defined benefit provision; outside this experience, that employers have tended not to stop anywhere in the middle of the pensions continuum but have leapt straight from defined benefit to defined contribution is less of a reflection of the lack of risk-sharing alternatives, as the NAPF directly suggests, than of the realities of employment relations in the 1990s: employers have done so because they can; and because the will to do something more creative (but evidently more costly) has not, except in a few, admirable cases, been found.

Despite the acknowledgement that ‘workplace pensions remain central to providing people with an adequate
retirement income’ and that workplace provision is ‘at the heart of good pension provision’, the central role in the NAPF’s vision is occupied not by workplace saving, but by a beefed-up state pension scheme – perhaps rather surprisingly, for an organisation representing (workplace-based) scheme sponsors, but perhaps a reflection that what has been lost will be hard to replace other than by slow incremental steps, starting from the 2012 reforms. Even within the context of workplace savings, the primary place in the NAPF programme is taken by a suggestion for a maximum of twenty ‘super trusts’ whose role would be to offer members of small schemes the low charges facilitated by the benefits of scale – a worthwhile, and supportable, idea alongside the NEST but whose contribution to revitalising workplace provision might well turn out to be less than dynamic.

Other suggestions from within the workplace savings context include offering ‘core’, unindexed pensions to scheme members only (it seems to me that indexation is an under-appreciated pensions benefit; while a focus on the scheme member only might be supported when retirement is far away, but deeply regretted once into retirement since ensuring loved ones are provided after your own death becomes much more important the closer you get to that point); improved mandatory contributions to the NEST (definitely supportable); better advice to accounting standards bodies on accounting for pensions (likewise); and a new statutory objective for the Pensions Regulator to promote good pensions provision (clearly a good idea).

So, there are some worthwhile things to explore in this document and the NAPF is to be congratulated for putting it out. It would be a shame if its publication at this point in the electoral cycle led to its many good ideas being lost to public debate. Nevertheless, in the meantime, I’m reminded once again that quality pensions expanded and became more beneficial at a time of labour strength; their contraction at a time of labour weakness simply proves that advances in benefits have to be won by collective action and are not given away by employers for free.

BA and the online newspaper ethos

One of the more interesting features of the newspaper industry is its long-standing use as a bulletin board: from quirky, ‘disgusted of Tonbridge Wells’-type letters to letters to The Thunderer and to other newspaper editors setting the world to rights or getting something on record, whether from the establishment, interested individuals and opinion formers. Letters usually had the resonance of importance and their publication in print frequently added weight to the arguments expressed, not least to the usual readerships of the newspapers concerned, whose leanings and approaches are well-known. Given this, their role in changing views might have been pretty limited – preaching to the converted is never going to change the world – but at least they had a role in commencing debate at some level. And you could open your favourite newspaper knowing that it wasn’t going to turn you a nasty shade of apopletic red.

Which is why I turned to yesterday’s letter to the Guardian by 95 leading academics criticising the behaviour of British Airways in its dispute with Unite with some interest. At the last count, there were 495 comments on the story and, at the (early) point at which I stopped reading them, a large percentage of people were using the piece to hang anti-Unite, frequently anti-trade union views, regardless of the debate which the academics had sought to start about BA’s actions.

Clearly, not so many typical readers of The Guardian among them. The question is, I guess, why – why would you hang around on a newspaper site, to the leanings of which you are not instinctively sympathetic, just to have a go? Well, because you can, probably: Web 2.0, where your opinions are not only desired but an integral part of the experience, has some things to answer for. Dialling The Times today re-directs you to a page (no doubt in the short-term) inviting you not just to read the thing but to ‘listen to it, watch it, shape it, be part of it‘, as part of its charging-based re-vamp, but the outcome in practice is frequently the facilitation of opportunities for wind-up merchants and trolls of all types.

I really don’t want to open the online version of The Guardian and be assaulted by a range of closed-minded views straight from the pages of the Daily Mail. If I want that, I’ll open the Mail. I’m as happy to engage in debate as the person stood next to me – and I’m not frightened of views opposed to mine. But what I do want is the sensible and rational, not the mindless. And I want it focused, not random. And I want debate, not diatribes. OK, no-one’s forcing me to read this stuff (and indeed I didn’t get very far with it, thus – at some level – wasting the time of all those whose views I didn’t trouble myself with, natch) but Web 2.0 does have the power to extend debate and that power is dissipated when debates are dominated by those whose purpose is not to engage but to flame. And that’s evidently a lost opportunity.

The answer – more active moderation, perhaps. That might be asking a lot for popular newspaper sites but, at the same time, if the benefits of Web 2.0 are to be realised, perhaps that lies in fewer articles and better moderation. A sort of approach based on ‘never mind the width, feel the quality’. It has to be possible. Alternatively, perhaps one of the benefits of charging for online access is not just support for journalistic quality, as these pages have argued before, but also a re-focusing of the debate engendered within such sites by making them less open to passing trolls.

As regards the academics’ letter: they’ve got more than a point about some of the actions of BA in this dispute and, from the perspective of this particular academic manqué, I like the phrasing of their approach around the issue of the ‘representation gap in UK employment relations’. Such a gap clearly does exist in all too many workplaces up and down the country. From the point of view of this debate, Keith Ewing has taken this on in today’s The Guardian in arguing that there is a human right to engage in strike action. The current laws of this country do not provide a right to strike, but industrial action is never undertaken lightly and remains a legitimate weapon to use against an intransigent employer. The increasingly hardline, right-wing approach to the taking of industrial action over the last twenty years is one that continues to divide this country from our European neighbours and the quality of our democracy is all the poorer for it.

‘Radical change’ called for in France Telecom

An interim report commissioned by France Telecom is reported to have said that the company has only ‘a few weeks’ to put new HR practices in place following the recent spate of suicides in the company. The report advises the new management team at the company, which took place at the start of March, of the need to ‘take charge and encourage radical change’ at the company if it is to recover its former status.

The report, which does not yet appear to have been leaked in full but which has been confirmed as authentic, has been seen by French and international newspapers. It has been commissioned from an organisation called Technologia whose motto is ‘Health and safety at the heart of decision-making’. In reaching an agreement with most of its trade unions last November, now ratified, France Telecom has already sought to put an end to some of the practices which had been believed to have led to the rise in the number of suicides, which now number 43 since January 2008 and including at least eight since the start of 2010. Nevertheless, the Technologia report, based on a series of 500 interviews with France Telecom employees, makes a series of 107 recommendations to address the crisis, calling in particular on the company to:

Implement a moratorium on reorganizations, closely monitor psychosocial risk factors and create an internal network of mediators to make the personnel department more accessible

– and all on the basis that ‘actions [need to] accompany all the talk‘. The report also calls on the company to institute a network of mediators, 30% external and 70% from inside France Telecom, whose role would be to listen to employees in difficulty and to play a ‘real role of arbitration’, and to undertake mobility moves only where the usefulness of such a move had been tested to the limits and where the employee concerned was provided with a supporting mentor.

The Technologia report is now being discussed with the unions representing France Telecom employees.

Further, it also emerged at the weekend that the Labour Inspectorate has lodged with the Paris prosecutor’s office an 82-page report condemning practices at the company as bullying behaviour likely to endanger the lives of others in the workplace, and which it believed to have stemmed from decisions taken at the highest level of the group.

Both the Technologia report and the Labour Inspectorate one are clearly critical of the approach of the company’s senior management and provide the trade unions with significant additional power in their continuing battle with France Telecom over its reorganisation. Technologia’s page on psycho-social hazards speaks of its role in terms of ‘the resumption of dialogue and building a relationship of trust between the social partners’; that’s likely to be a mighty hard row to hoe in France Telecom, but an approach rooted in the dignity of labour, and which actively promotes the needs of employees, not least in a mental health setting, in corporate restructuring situations has a lot to commend itself.

Prospect statement on Vodafone job cuts

Prospect has reacted angrily to yesterday’s announcement of job cuts in Vodafone [registration required; limited viewing time; alternative source].

Steve Thomas, Prospect’s National Officer for Vodafone, has contacted the company to express serious concerns over the cuts themselves as well as the complete lack of consultation, Prospect having learned of the cuts via the media. We are also disturbed about reports that individuals are being asked to leave the business without notice.

You can read the full statement here.

Vodafone needs to learn that, whatever co-operation Prospect members are prepared to provide over resourcing decisions, the quid pro quo for that is decent treatment and respect for the contribution they have made during their lives in the company. Where that doesn’t occur, the price of that amongst those left behind is lower morale, lower productivity and lesser co-operation.

International Women’s Day

8 March is International Women’s Day (loading very slowly, today) – a day adopted by the United Nations in 1975 to build support for women’s rights and participation in the political and economic arenas. The banner under which events are taking place this year is ‘Equal Rights, Equal Opportunities, Progress For All‘ and they include an event at the TUC tonight promising ‘a night of comedy, music, poetry, politics and campaigning‘. LabourList is also commemorating the event with a day of women-only blogging, under a female guest editor following Rowenna Davis’s turn in the hot seat last year.

Justice for Colombia, to which Prospect is affiliated, is holding a one hour vigil at the Colombian Embassy today at 4pm to mark International Women’s Day and protest against the ongoing detention of human rights defender Liliany Obando, while Prospect members can download an excellent newsletter celebrating the achievements of women in Prospect.

For as long as inequality remains, we need to be reminded of why, so such special days as these continue to be useful. But, as Michael Foot said:

Describe the challenges by all means, but don’t confuse analysis with action. The one must lead to the other if it is to be useful to people. (Hat-tip: Roger Darlington)

Making International Women’s Day useful to women across the globe via practical action will, I suspect, continue to be a source of challenge for the organisers of such events, and policy-makers more generally, for some time to come.

Reminder: Work Your Proper Hours Day…

… is today. Today’s the day when the average person who does unpaid overtime would start earning for themselves if they did all their unpaid overtime at the start of the year. Celebrate it!

To coincide, the TUC has published some new analysis of official statistics to highlight those occupations that have the most working hours, particularly those working ‘extreme’ levels of unpaid overtime – i.e. people working more than ten extra hours per week. For this group, this level of unpaid overtime means that Work Your Proper Hours Day is not until at least 26 April (or later, for those working more than ten additional hours per week).

By occupation, the Work Your Proper Hours Day for some key groups of employees for which high levels of unpaid overtime is more common is as follows:

Functional managers – 25 April

Corporate managers and senior officials – 7 May

Business and statistical professionals – 30 April

Quality and customer care managers – 20 April

Legal professionals – 20 April

ICT – 15 April

Business and financial professionals – 2 May

For members of Prospect in a major private sector employer with which we deal, our most recent survey of terms and conditions found out that the average level of unpaid overtime was 8.14 hours per week. At the median salary level of £40,500, this took people’s hourly rate down from £21.56 to £17.58 – indicating an average value to the employer of unpaid overtime of nearly £7,500 per year. And countless costs as regards personal and family lives and relationships.

Getting a work-life balance that works for you as an individual has been at the heart of the union’s continuing worktime, yourtime campaign seeking to promote options that can provide a better work-life balance for individuals. That might entail making small, simple changes or making more significant long-term changes to your working pattern.

The worktime yourtime pages within the Connect sector of Prospect also give more specific advice about particular issues and options for achieving a better work-life balance. Use them!

Pay: prospects for 2010

In recognition of today’s joint TUC/Incomes Data Services conference on pay bargaining, the TUC has produced a list of ten myths on pay in the context of the recession which you can find both here and on Richard Exell’s post on ToUChstone.

The myths, which are drawn from the different parts of the union movement, are common ones and ones that are likely to appear again and again over the next few months, not least since the spring months are the most significant ones for pay negotiations, with the largest number of pay deals concluded during the January-April period; and there’s also the issue of the forthcoming general election. They’re well worth repeating in these specific contexts, and they do need to be tackled whenever they occur, so here they are in brief:

1. MYTH: above inflation wage increases could set off a damaging wage spiral. REALITY: wages are not driving inflation at the minute and it’s normal in the long-run for wages to increase above the rate of inflation

2. MYTH: further freezes and cuts are needed to make companies profitable again. REALITY: Some companies may be struggling but rates of return remain generous and cuts are likely to be damaging to growth

3. MYTH: Wage freezes have been widespread through the private sector. REALITY: Two-thirds of companies gave rises last year, with a median increase of 2.3%

4. MYTH: Wage freezes will be just as widespread in 2010. REALITY: the economy is growing again and inflation is on the rise. Wage claims, and pay agreements, are likely to follow suit

5. MYTH: Unions have accepted wage freezes because they are too weak to negotiate pay rises. REALITY: Wage freezes have occurred where there are genuine cases of hardship but unions are wise to cases of wage restraint designed to boost company profits

6. MYTH: Public sector pay freezes are an alternative to job losses. REALITY: a false choice, since short-term pay restraint has a limited effect other than on staff morale

7. MYTH: A minimum wage freeze will prevent job losses in the private sector. REALITY: this makes little sense socially, given the background to the recession, or indeed economically since the lowest paid are likely to use more of their wages on spending than on saving

8. MYTH: Raising the minimum wage for young people will make it harder for them to find jobs: REALITY: The recession has hit young people hard, but employment has fared better in low-paying sectors

9. MYTH: Public sector wages rocketed while private sector wages contracted last year. REALITY: data changes caused the discrepancy, not least given the dominance in the average wage figures of the nationalised banks. Since 1999, public sector wages have grown more slowly than those in the private sector.

10. MYTH: Public servants earn more than workers in the private sector. REALITY: this is like comparing apples and pears. Where similar jobs are compared, the differential does not depart strongly from zero.

More myths to the list can always be added: from a purely private-sector perspective, for example, we have the myth (not least in a recession, but not limited to such times) that pay can be meaningfully linked to performance. In the coming weeks and months, this blog will be doing its bit to bust the myths on pay that come our way.

The myths on this list are busted more fully on Richard’s ToUChstone post, while regular readers of ToUChstone will recognise several from individual in-depth postings in recent weeks. As Richard says, the recovery remains fragile and is likely to be threatened by wage restraint. Individual sets of pay negotiations are likely to be dominated more by the circumstances of the organisation concerned, with the economy providing more of a backdrop, but, from a macro perspective, it is clear that a growing economy will be driven by people spending money – and that implies a clear economic need for real wage rises.

A 21-hour week?

The new economics foundation’s latest report, published on Saturday, seeks to argue the case for why shorter working time could help us all to flourish in the 21st century.

nef believes that shorter working time is ‘set to become the norm’ as the country grapples with the economic, social and environmental problems confronting it, not least against the backdrop of the work-earn-consume vicious circle, while a goal of a 21-hour week would, in the words of Anna Coote, co-author of the report and nef’s Head of Social Policy let us see that:

Spending less time in paid work could help us to break this pattern. We’d have more time to be better parents, better citizens, better carers and better neighbours. And we could even become better employees: less stressed, more in control, happier in our jobs and more productive. It is time to break the power of the old industrial clock, take back our lives and work for a sustainable future.

Lower working time would, via a reduction in stress patterns, certainly help to make us better people. It might also help unemployment – though probably not in the short-term – and an ending of consumerism might well conserve environmental resources. The latter might be a step too far for some in the face of the need for economies to expand, but a just transition to a green economy, preserving jobs and skills with a view to the benefits of a growing economy, differently constituted, remains the right emphasis here.

A working week of 21 hours for all might or might not be an achievable goal – but at least it’s a good hook for a general discussion on the social impact of working time. The level of unpaid overtime in the UK remains too high and, while average working hours have come down in the last ten years (ASHE reports a reduction of one hour in the mean hours of full-time employees between 1997 and 2009), the working week in the UK remains above the EU average, both for the expanded EU and for member states prior to the accession of countries in eastern and central Europe where working hours are higher.

The following chart shows the long-term decline in working time in the UK, as reported by the OECD. The measure used – average annual hours actually worked per worker – is not ideal (not least since it does not strip out the effects of a rise in temporary and part-time working, and since the reduction between 2001 and 2003 is not readily explicable), but it does show that working time in the UK has fallen by about 15% over the period.

Ahead of next week’s Work Your Proper Hours Day, nef’s report is a worthwhile contribution to the debate at the macro level. The policy solutions associated with such ‘blue sky’ thinking are frequently problematic, and this is no exception. Nevertheless, the major difficulty always lies in making this sort of debate meaningful at the micro level, where the notion of such drastic cuts in working time means little to many full-time employees focused as they are on keeping their jobs, not to say their pensions. On a day-to-day basis, the basic goal remains one of getting people to think about their own work-life balance and, in this context, such reports continue to offer useful service. A reduction of a similar order to that reported by the OECD, and over a quicker period, would be welcome and if the report contributes to that objective, well and good.

Not just a picture from my hols…

… but also a reference not only to this week’s welcome economic news but also to the TUC’s forthcoming Going Green at Work conference, taking place on 15 March and being chaired by Prospect’s own Paul Noon.

Make Me Wanna Holler…

Research published today by the TUC shows that UK workers gave away £27bn in unpaid overtime in 2009.

Some five million of you regularly worked unpaid overtime last year – with the average amount of unpaid overtime being 7 hours and 12 minutes per week. On the basis of a 36-hour week, that’s exactly one additional new working day per week. The absolute number of people working unpaid overtime fell back slightly on 2008 levels, but the individual annual value of all that unpaid overtime was some 5% higher on 2008, at £5,402 (an increase of £263).

The figures (which include some interesting data at the level of the nations making up the UK and the English regions) have been released as part of the TUC’s preparation for Work Your Proper Hours Day – the day when workers start getting paid if all their unpaid overtime for the year was worked from 1 January. Pressures on workers in a recession are huge and workers susceptible to losing their jobs are, understandably, likely to do all they can to keep them – including putting in extra hours. This is why the TUC’s message this year for Work Your Proper Hours Day is that bosses ‘should thank staff for the extra work they are putting in to help businesses through the recession’ (as well as that ‘pointless presenteeism’ is bad for staff and businesses).

These figures are close to those we have found from our own surveys. The 2009 BT survey, for example, found that full-timers worked an additional 8 hours and 10 minutes on top of their contractual working week (that’s a normal week which extends not only across Saturday as a normal working day but into Sunday too). We also regularly find that stress rises significantly with working time – and 2009 was no different.

This year, Work Your Proper Hours Day is Friday 26 February. But you don’t have to wait ’til then to start claiming your life back.

How much is your job worth?

The new economics foundation has today published a provocative document looking at the real value to society of a range of different professions in the attempt to explore issues around how our pay relates to ‘worth’ as well as the inter-relationship between the work that we do and the impact on wider society.

The report compares six professions and ten ‘myths’ about pay and work and, while it won’t surprise (given its stated purpose to ‘shatter some myths about work and value’) that nef’s methodology delivers some justification for Adair Turner’s views of the ‘socially useless’ nature of large swathes of banking activity, nor that cleaners and waste recycling workers are engaged in work that is far more socially useful, the report nevertheless produces some highly interesting points for policy-makers. Its central conclusion, that:

We urgently need to align incentives with the social and environmental value that are generated by the workforce,

is one that (with an appropriate grammatical correction!) needs further promulgation in a world in which pay is set at one end of the market by peers and, at the other, by a race to the bottom driven by the need to make savings on outsourced contracts, whether in the public or the private sector, and where work is dominated by vulnerable workers rather than ones which share a belief that they are ‘masters of the universe’.

The difficulty that remains is that, in a privatised, globalised world, where issues including wages have been handed over to the frequently distorting hand of neo-liberalist perspectives, reining market-induced excess back in again demands intervention and regulation and will increasingly demand internationally-co-ordinated action. Difficult things to achieve in practice and ones that are likely to require clear and concerted explanations if they are to be ‘popular’ in action, and not just on paper in individual opinion polls.

Nevertheless, the report is a timely one in that, in a post-crisis world, priorities will have to be set for public finances; having a framework for why public services need to be maintained, why there is a need for a commission to explore high wages and why decisions have been made over taxation policy, to name but three examples, is an essential first step in setting out why such priorities have been set – and indeed, why they are important. It is also likely to require a government that has confidence about its decisions.

France Telecom agreement on staff mobility?

La Tribune, France’s business newspaper, has reported that France Telecom has signed an agreement on Thursday last week with four trade unions on its package of measures to deal with the work mobility pressures that have led to a spate of suicides amongst managerial grades in the company.

Trade union websites (e.g. CFTD, CGT and CFE-CGC) are as yet silent on the agreement and at least one – Federation Sud – has apparently refused to sign the agreement [registration required; limited viewing time] on the grounds that it doesn’t go far enough to restore employee confidence.

The report in La Tribune states that the agreement will establish a system of part-time working, without loss, for those three years from retirement including pay at up to 80% of the previous level. Some 14,000 people are eligible for the measure and, on the basis of an assumed take-up by 11,000 workers, will cost c. €700m (not the €1bn earlier reported). Measures also envisaged under the agreement include the setting up of career orientation interviews for employees aged 45 and over and guaranteeing access to training for employees in the same age group. On this morning’s Radio Classique, Stephane Richard, no. 2 at the company, is reported to have confirmed that next year, albeit without definitely ending the practice of mobility, it would not have the mobility scheme that has previously existed; that there would be no forced moves for anyone within three years of retirement; and that mobility would in the future be voluntary. In short: ‘C’est bien un nouveau France Télécom que nous voulons’ (‘It’s a new FT that we’re looking for’).

Looks like the close of a chapter which the French unions and workers in solidarity have done well to pursue. If indeed an agreement has been signed, it’s to be hoped that this ends the tragic spate of suicides in France Telecom which have occurred over the past twenty months.

Harassment and violence at work

The TUC has joined with employer organisations in launching guidelines on the prevention of harassment and violence at work, implementing in the UK a framework agreement between the social partners signed at EU level in 2007. The guidance, aimed at both employers and workers, and which can be accessed via a specific website on Preventing Harassment at Work, has also been endorsed by BIS, ACAS and the HSE.

The guidance outlines that any form of harassment and violence against workers, whether committed by other employees, managers or third parties, is unacceptable and proceeds by identifying that tolerance, diversity, dignity and respect are benchmarks of success. It sets out employers’ legal obligations in this area but also encourages employers and unions to agree on the basis of a social dialogue how to tackle the range of problems of harassment and violence in the workplace.

Most large employers, and unionised workplaces in general, are likely to have policies already in place – and certainly to be more highly aware of the issue, although the specific agreements that the guidelines seek to promote may be less common. Even so, outside such workplaces, the guidelines will have found an all too  ready home: four employees die from violence at work every year in the UK and three people a day suffer major injuries.

Hat-tip:  TUC press release on the issue

NICE report on mental health at work

The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, an independent organisation providing national guidance on the promotion of good health and the prevention and treatment of ill health, has today produced a new public health guidance note for the Department of Health on Promoting mental wellbeing through productive and healthy working conditions.

Starting from the presumption that work has an important role in employees’ mental wellbeing, but that it can also have negative effects on health, particularly in the form of stress, the guidance includes a very useful paragraph summarising the issues in and around the workplace that pose risks to mental health at work:

Working environments that pose risks for mental wellbeing put high demands on a person without giving them sufficient control and support to manage those demands. A perceived imbalance between the effort required and the rewards of the job can lead to stress. A sense of injustice and unfairness arising from management processes or personal relationships can also increase stress and risks to mental health.

The guidance note is aimed at all those who have ‘a direct or indirect role in, and responsibility for, promoting mental wellbeing at work’ and includes a series of four recommendations, as well as an appeal to primary care trusts, primary care services and occupational health services to provide support for employees and employers in micro, small and medium-sized businesses. The major recommendations intended to assist employers, employees and trade unions to protect the mental health of employees at work are:

– take a strategic and co-ordinated approach to promoting employees’ mental wellbeing

– assess opportunities for promoting employees’ mental wellbeing and managing risks

– provide employees with opportunities for flexible working

– strengthen the role of line managers in promoting the mental wellbeing of employees through supportive leadership style and management practices.

There is little that is new about any of these – good organisations should already have an eye on employees wellbeing and many, in conjunction with their trade unions, do actively promote employees’ mental health. The advice is complementary to the advice and standards on stress that already exists, including from the Health and Safety Executive, and it is a useful addition to the armoury of tools that exists in this area, not least in providing detailed references to other related guidance.

Nevertheless, the timing of the publication is key: in a continuing recession, with rising unemployment and concerns over job security, and when employees are under even greater pressure to cover for redundant colleagues, the guidance is a timely reminder of the costs of poor mental health which can be associated with organisational responses to recession and of the duty of all to safeguard against the worst effect of economic crisis in the workplace.

Labour photo of the year

LabourStart has been running a photo competition to nominate the 2009 labour photo of the year and, some 3,200 votes (and, so far, more than three times as many views) later, the winner has been announced.

You can also still view the other photos nominated here.

A good competition – and a very worthy winner: it’s a photo that challenges.

France Telecom establishes €1bn staff help fund

This morning’s Financial Times is reporting that France Telecom, under intense pressure from workers following a series of work-related suicides amongst its managerial and professional staff, is in the process of establishing a €1bn fund to provide some support to workers towards the end of their careers.

Negotiations on the programme with the company’s trade unions are apparently not yet concluded (and the union websites are as yet silent), but the purpose of the fund seems to be to allow workers aged 57  – the group most affected by the company’s restructuring and the currently-suspended system of compulsory job moves every three years – to move to part-time working while maintaining pay. It needs to be stated that not all those who have committed suicide in the past period (or who have sought to do so) are, however, in this age group.

The size of the fund is not fixed at €1bn but, according to the report, the company has acknowledged that a sum of that magnitude is its ‘working hypothesis’ and would depend on the final precise terms of the scheme and the eventual take-up.

The news was broken as the item appeared in a briefing on the company’s third quarter results – the analyst materials for which do refer to as yet incomplete negotiations on a new social contract, part of which encompasses talks on psychological risks and the programme of part-time work for seniors (see slide 17 of slide pack).

A full conclusion needs to wait for the outcome of the negotiations with the unions but, for now, it does demonstrate what workers acting together can achieve in the context of social dialogue.

Hat-tip: Martin Silman, Executive Director Industry Analyst Relations at AT&T.

Equal Pay Day 2009

… Is today. Or, perhaps, it’s Unequal Pay Day since 30 October is when women stop getting paid this year.

The Fawcett Society, which works for gender equality in the UK, has launched the initiative on the basis that, with an equal pay gap of 17.1% at the full-time level, this is the point in the year when women are effectively working for their employers for free compared to their male counterparts who will get paid right the way through until 31 December. The equivalent of 62 working days without pay.

You can find out more about the Fawcett Society campaign here, while Connect reps can access Connect’s equal pay pages – including the submission on equal pay audits about which I blogged a couple of days ago – here. A group of leading campaigners, including the TUC’s Brendan Barber, has also written to The Guardian seeking a number of initiatives designed to deliver justice in the workplace for women.

With the EHRC consultation on equal pay audits, there is the opportunity to make real strides for equal pay in 2010 and beyond – should it be bold enough to recommend that the government take decisive action via mandatory pay audits. It is clear to us that the voluntary approach will not deliver the real action required to ensure that the equal pay gap is closed and, in this context, the government’s reluctance to take that step is hard to understand. The forthcoming Equalities Bill offers the opportunity to address this and we would urge the government to use it to make a start on extending the pay calendar for women by introducing equal pay audits.

UK slips in gender gap league

A report published today by the World Economic Forum (link is to press release) shows the UK slipping to 15th place in a table of 134 countries on the issue of gender equality. This continues a process of gentle decline which has seen the UK slip from 9th in 2006 to 11th, 13th and now 15th.

The Forum’s gender gap index assesses how well countries are dividing resources and opportunities between men and women, regardless of the overall levels of these resources and opportunities, and combines individual assessments within four overall sub-indices: economic participation and opportunity; educational attainment; health and survival; and political empowerment.

The UK ranks top (or, rather, equal top) in terms of the indices on educational attainment, but 22nd on political empowerment, 35th on economic participation and opportunity, and 72nd on health and survival (largely owing to a rather low-looking ‘healthy life expectancy’ of 72 for women and 69 for men).

Income falls within the economic  participation and opportunity sub-index, and here the UK ranks 20th with women’s estimated earned income, in terms of purchasing power parity, standing at 70% of that of men. This is actually the UK’s best result within this index but survey figures on wage equality for similar work show a figure of just 64%  – and the UK ranks 78th, its lowest level within this whole sub-index (just for comparison, Uzbekistan ranked top on this measure).

Nordic countries, headed by Iceland, filled the first four places – the same four countries as in 2008 (albeit in a different order). New Zealand filled fifth place, as it did in 2008, while South Africa jumped from 22nd to 6th, as a result predominantly of improvements in women’s participation in the labour force and in the representation of women both in the South African parliament and the government.

The individual component figures in the survey can always be challenged, but the survey acts as a useful check on the UK’s general progress towards gender equality – or, in this case, its lack thereof. The result on pay equality is particularly poor and chimes with recent research in the UK which shows that the gender pay gap remains, in the words of the Women and Work Commission, ‘stubbornly persistent‘ despite a reducing trend. At the same time, however, it does provide an opportunity to address the factors which might provide for the step-change required for women to break through the gap which remains.

Perhaps Proposals for promoting greater transparency in the private sector, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission consultation on improving gender equality in the workplace which closes tomorrow, might provide some way forward. As far as Connect is concerned, and as we argued in our submission to the consultation, mandatory pay audits are the way forward since they lead to structured and agreed action being taken towards a closing of the gap, with subsequent publication being the trigger both for accountability and for action.

Tories to deregulate health and safety?

This week’s Risks newsletter, edited for the TUC by Rory O’Neill of Hazards magazine, contains an item on ‘Regulation in the post-bureaucratic age’, a recently published Tory policy document on the regulation of health and safety.

Essentially, what is being offered employers is a system of self-regulation under which ‘well run’ employers with certain checks in place, including the employment of professionally qualified experts in health and safety, could refuse to allow HSE inspectors on to their premises except in cases of emergency. External health and safety audits would also be arranged independently of government inspectors.

This forms part of a series of Tory initiatives on regulation – if not quite a ‘bonfire of the quangos’ then a ‘taming of the regulators’ – which has resonance for its likely approaches to other areas of regulation.

The problems with this particular initiative are legion. The document itself draws analogies with the system of controls and audits of corporate financial information which, as Risks correctly points out, brought us Enron and other financial scandals. These scandals taught us – or ought to have done – that information which is intended to be made public is not necessarily reliable and internal appointed experts are not always – whistle blowers apart – able to exercise the appropriate degree of independence which provides the reliable safeguards being sought. Hindsight is a powerful weapon of learning for other analogous circumstances – we ought to use it.

Secondly, where is the evidence that health and safety inspectors cause onerous burdens to business? We all know the triggers that health and safety provides readers of a certain newspaper but, in reality, the health and safety inspectorate is woefully under-resourced as it is (see facts and figures from the Third Report of the Work and Pensions Committee in April 2008) and instances of HSE inspectors landing on premises to carry out spot checks are rare. Perhaps this really is policy making for – and by – newspaper readers…

Thirdly, we ought not – but clearly we do – need to be reminded that, even under the current regime, accidents happen at work. Nine people died in the devastating ICL Plastics gas explosion – commonly referred to as Stockline – in 2004, while 33 others were injured. The independent audit concluded that the explosion was an ‘avoidable disaster’ based on ‘serious weaknesses’ not only in the way the companies ran the plant but also, crucially, in the health and safety legislation. Not only did the company management ‘lack knowledge and understanding’ of the underground piping which was the cause of the explosion, the HSE itself was guilty of a ‘stiffly bureaucratic’ response (quotes from here). This provides no reason to seek further cuts in the bureaucracy: an unbending of the bureaucracy is likely to require rather more, not rather fewer, inspectors – yet this is surely likely to be the outcome of proposals such as these. Rightly, trade unions including Prospect, which represents HSE staff and with which Connect is recommending merger in a ballot of our membership now taking place, have strongly criticised them.

In the area of health and safety at work, ‘light touch’ regulation does not work – and workers should not need to pay with their lives for that lesson to be continually re-learned.

World Day for Decent Work

… is today. Trade union organisations around the world are organising events and initiatives publicising the themes of the day. Tonight, at Congress House, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze are joining TUC Deputy General Secretary Frances O’Grady for a night of rhyme, rhythm and reason (and food)

WDDW is an initiative of the International Trade Union Confederation, the global confederation of trade union organisations. Decent work issues encompass, amongst others at the global level, migration; discrimination; equality; forced labour; human trafficking; child labour; other core labour standards such as the right to bargain collectively and the freedom to organise; freedom of expression; laws and agreements; the informal economy; climate issues (green jobs); health and safety; social protection; poverty and food crisis; and social dialogue.

More broadly, the context for WDDW is the threat to the jobs and futures of people everywhere as a result of the economic and employment crisis, and their background in decades of deregulation and in the greed and excess of a tiny minority which have pushed the world into the deepest recession since the 1930s. Decent work must be at the centre of government actions to bring back economic growth and fundamentally to reform the global economy so that it puts people first.