Negotiating the Future of Work: Automation and New Technology
Automation can be a strong mobilising issue that draws on members’ concerns about job security, the changing nature of job roles and heightened pressures on the workforce.
Over the last few years, Unite, UNISON and Prospect have all developed model new technology agreements and provide bargaining support for reps and stewards who want to campaign in this area. The issues are also rising up the agenda at conferences, with UNISON members passing motions on automation in 2018 – and automation being high on the agenda of sector conferences at Unite. However, without agreements in place, to date, the union response to technology in the workplace has largely been reactive. More needs to be done to engage members.
It is hard to start campaigning around automation without knowing what is happening in the workplace already, understanding members’ feelings about the issue, and having at least some idea of the likely impact on jobs and specific job roles in the future.
Recent research has shown that in many workplaces, workers may not even know how technology is impacting them, nor are very many consulted prior to its implementation.
- A recent TUC survey found that a shocking 89 per cent of workers do not know whether their employer is using HR systems run on AI to manage functions such as performance, shift patterns, absences, leave and/ or recruitment (Technology Managing People, 2021)
- A survey by the Community Union carried out just before the pandemic found that two-thirds (65 per cent) of workers said they had not been consulted the last time a new technology had been introduced at their workplace.
- A recent UNISON branch survey also found that just 17 per cent of branches had been consulted over the introduction of automation.
How to start a conversation on new technology
If new technology is not yet an established workplace issue, there are many available sources of information to get the conversation started.
If there is a good relationship with the employer, it may be possible to ask them for their future plans for investment in new technology via existing bargaining and consultation apparatus. Member surveys can also be a good source of intelligence on how technology is impacting job roles and what they feel about the future.
In some cases, it may be necessary for officials to ‘feed-in’ information from external sources about what technology may be coming or is already in place in other similar workplaces and sectors, as in the Unite example on page 00.
Many unions and the TUC already provide material on automation and digitisation that can be used as bargaining support for campaigns. There is also an increasing amount of union-backed research looking into how their members are already being affected by technology (See APPENDIX 1).
The unions that have successfully negotiated new technology agreements have either carried out extensive research, reflective exercises and a consultation with members or have existing bargaining apparatus in place that ensures that the union is consulted on any planned changes long before their implementation.
Unite has made a considerable efforts to start a conversation with members and prepare the ground for negotiating around new technology across all its 19 industrial sectors, although progress towards reaching agreements has been hampered by the Covid pandemic.
Example: Unite’s research and consultation exercise on automation
In 2017-18, Unite the Union undertook a major research and consultation exercise on automation in order to encourage bargaining on the issue across its 19 industrial sectors. As a first stage, the National Organising and Leverage Department prepared a report summarising the threats and opportunities poses by sector. It also developed a model new technology agreement.
The initial research findings were workshopped in sector and regional committees, with the feedback from the reps involved leading to the production of more detailed sector reports that could be used as a basis for campaigning on new technology. Before the Covid pandemic hit, the Unite strategy was making positive inroads at over 1000 employers in several sectors:
Passenger Transport and new technology: in 2019, Darren Brown who works at Stagecoach Oxford, and is Vice Chair of Unite Passenger Transport committee said: “We are building a combine of leading reps in the bus industry to campaign for a national new technology agreement to protect bus workers’ jobs from the threat of automation. I urge all reps to take this up urgently.”
There were also promising signs in food manufacturing with Unite shop stewards at Nestlé attempting a new technology agreement to safeguard jobs in an industry where employers are currently talking about now being the time “to take labour out of the equation”.
A number of German unions have also been involved in detailed proactive work to prepare the ground for new technology negotiations.
Example: The Arbeit 2020 project in Germany
In Germany, three major unions, led by IG Metall, collaborated with external researchers and consultants in a research and learning exercise on new technology in several manufacturing plants. The Arbeit 2020 project, which began in 2016, aimed to empower local works councils’ members to bargain over digitalisation at the workplace level. It was part-funded by the regional Ministry of Labour, Welfare and Social Affairs and the European Social Fund and had the technical support of two consultancy firms (Sustain Consult and TBS). The project involved over 30 metalworking companies and was also supervised by the Institute for Work, Skills and Training of the University of Duisburg-Essen.
Once invited into the workplace, the union officials and consultants held workshops with worker reps as well as interviews with managers and IT experts (usually in charge of devising digitalisation projects) in order to gain an idea of the company’s strategy towards innovation.
The next stage was workshops with employees by departments, to collect insights about the current state of operations as well as likely future developments. These considered:
- work organisation (with specific regard to the chain of command);
- technology (with particular emphasis on the level of digital connectedness and the level of self-control of machines);
- employment trends, skills and qualification measures and working conditions (considering elements such as stress and workload).
After these processes were completed, the union-consultant group drew up a “Map of digitalisation” for the company, highlighting the issues that need to be tackled. This was then used for bargaining with management. The project resulted in the signing of agreements shaping future digital change in several plants. The plant-level agreements were then used to influence the wider company’s development plans.
The agreements contained clauses on union rights to information and/or the establishment of labour-management working groups, as well as provisions regarding more substantial issues such as skills development, apprenticeship contracts, working hours and workers’ data protection. According to IG Metall official Patrick Loos, the process led to a realisation “that most relevant problems were related to the area of organisation, leadership, training and working conditions…. Each plant had a different situation and it was impossible for outsiders to go in with fixed specifications for the shaping of change.” IG Metall used its experience of Arbeit 2020 as the basis for training 1000 full-time and voluntary officials to act as ‘promoters of change’ in the workplace.
Example: Putting people at the centre of new technology on the railways
The German EVG union represents the vast majority of workers in the state-run railway company Deutsche-Bahn (DB). It began its strategy towards negotiating its ground-breaking ‘Work 4.0 ’ agreement with the company by carrying out a major research and consultation process. The first stage was a union-only reflective exercise to generate ideas around how to ‘humanise’ the coming changes. Officials and reps asked themselves the following broad question:
- How can we shift the focus of technical change onto people?
- Can people be part of digital changes?
- How can flexible workplaces support a life/work balance?
- How are digital transformation skills designed?
- In the future, will people be able to work autonomously or will they be controlled digitally?
- How are work processes/jobs changing?
- How must employee data protection be refined?
The next stage was a mass consultation with 15,000 members to find out how technology was impacting them and their hopes and fears for the future. The union then ensured that the agreement included the setting up of a joint working group to investigate how technology was affecting the specifics of job roles within the sectorThis provided space for more detailed and ongoing research into changes.