TUC Equality Audit 2024
The 2024 TUC Equality Audit indicates that during 2022 and 2023 the climate for equality bargaining has not continued to improve as seen four years earlier. While awareness of equality among some employers has increased in the last two years, this has often failed to result in real improvements on the ground.
As in previous collective bargaining TUC Equality Audits, unions were asked whether they had found it more or less difficult to get employers to address equality issues in the last two years.
The questionnaire was answered in late 2023/early 2024, so responses relate to a period between the start of 2022 and end of 2023.
Unfortunately, the experiences of Covid-19 and its equality impacts do not seem to have improved the climate for equality collective bargaining.
Of the 43 unions participating in the Audit, 41 responded to the question. They present a mixed picture, but with the balance of responses tilted slightly towards a negative view and certainly not indicative of good progress. Nine unions (21 per cent) felt it had got easier to get employers to address equality issues, 11 (26 per cent) said it had become more difficult, and 21 (49 per cent) thought it had stayed about the same, some of whom suggested there were pluses and minuses in different sectors.
This is a deterioration from the rather more positive scenario indicated in the 2020 Equality Audit, when 33 per cent said it had become easier (in the two years prior to the pandemic) and 22 per cent said it had become more difficult.
The slightly negative feeling among national unions is amplified by the separate survey of workplace union reps whose results are set out in Appendix A to this report. 42 per cent of reps responding to the survey said it had got more difficult to get employers to address equality issues in the last couple of years. Among national unions there is a fairly widespread feeling that there is more awareness among employers of the legal requirements and/ or of a reputational need to engage with equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI). However, many unions said that awareness and understanding did not match up to policies made at the top or improvements on the ground. This lack of improvement on the ground, which reps are more likely to see, may be why reps were more likely than officers to report the bargaining environment becoming more difficult.
Among those that felt it had become easier to engage employers on equality issues, the NAHT said there “appears to be a greater awareness of equality legislation and wider societal expectations around support for those with protected characteristics.” The union also cited its own role in empowering and supporting its members to raise the profile of equality issues. PFA said the football industry “understands the importance of EDI more now than ever.”
Greater awareness was also used by NSEAD and by Prospect, but they felt that equality policies are sometimes used by employers as tick boxes for accreditation. Box-ticking was also a complaint from other unions. Unite spoke of ‘well washing’, in which employers, particularly in the engineering sector, feel they have to “extol the virtues of equalities as it’s important for hiring and winning contracts.” RMT noted that train operating companies must show how they support diversity as part of their franchising contract. While this makes them more amenable to talk about equality, “so often EDI discussions can feel like tick box exercises.”
Community felt there was “greater understanding of the benefits of addressing equality issues and reducing business risk,” though it frequently gets overtaken by other priorities.
The UK government's hostile narratives have also made it more difficult for unions to engage civil service employers on equality issues
A number of unions organising in the health sector, including SoR, RCP and BDA, also suggested the NHS had become more aware of the need to address disparities but that there was a lack of speed and energy in progressing the issues on the ground. The SoR said that some regions had moved “from data collection into proactive work” to improve disparities, while the CSP had noticed that, while the NHS generally was more open to discussing equality, there are “systemic problems on a local basis”. CSP’s comments were echoed by Unite, whose NHS reps say local managers are not knowledgeable about their equality obligations, in particular the requirements to provide reasonable adjustments.
The divergence between awareness of equality issues in organisations but lack of action on the ground is also seen in other sectors. Usdaw noted that equality policies or practices are still agreed by companies as they “are often perceived to be a cheaper option” than any subsequent legal challenges from failure to act, but that this frequently fails to filter down to the shop floor, and members’ experience depends very much on the attitude of their store/site manager.
This trend was also witnessed amongst the AUE and WGGB, who represent self-employed or freelance workers who do not have the same employment rights as employees and are also often excluded from workplace agreements and polices. The WGGB said: “There are no statutory obligations for engagers to report the diversity statistics of those they engage on a freelance basis. While engagers are aware of the need to engage writers from diverse backgrounds, there is a lack of effective monitoring or regulation that can hold them to account.” It added that there are some employer initiatives to improve representation, but the data collected is not shared in a transparent way and the schemes “rarely result in actual paid work.”
Some education unions felt the wider political climate had made it more difficult to get employers to engage on equality issues. The NEU put this down to funding cuts, recruitment and retention issues and the loss of teaching assistants, and the NASUWT cited the Westminster government’s hostile political narratives on equality 2 and downgrading of the equality agenda, “resulting in employers sidelining equalities/ deeming equality policies unimportant.”
The UK government’s hostile narratives have also made it more difficult for unions to engage civil service employers on equality issues. Both the PCS and the FDA noted that the government’s plan to review/cut the EDI spend is already having a negative impact.
Looking at unions who operate exclusively in certain nations, UCAC, which organises in Wales, says there are no problems regarding support from its government or local authorities. In the Scottish education sector, the EIS said the 2020 resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement had made employers more willing to engage on anti-racism, but that flexible working for disabled workers brought in during the Covid-19 pandemic largely “appears to have been forgotten.
The cost-of-living crisis, recruitment and retention problems and pay battles are cited by several unions for a lack of engagement by employers with equality issues. Napo mentioned pressures of work, amplified by a staffing crisis and the NUJ said, “the cost-of- living crisis has discouraged employers from proactively looking at equality issues and instead the focus has been on cost-cutting.” The TSSA said there is greater awareness among employers, but “the challenging economic circumstances have made employers reluctant or resistant to implementing policies and practices that incur any additional costs or expenses.”
UNISON’s response highlighted contradictions in the situation, saying “in a challenging economic environment, where employers may not be able to agree meaningful pay increases, equality agreements may be the only way to achieve positive improvements in working conditions. However, employers’ actions do not bear this out.”
- 2 In this report we use the term hostile political narratives to describe the behaviours, narratives and actions that would usually be described under the phrase ‘culture wars’.
The findings from the audit may indicate that the combination of difficult economic circumstances and hostile political narratives on equality is creating a harder environment to bargain in for many. This is to the point in some case where equality agreements, which were previously seen as a way to maintain or improve workplace relations during tough economic times, are being eased out.
One in four unions even said there had been instances of equality policies being diluted or practices worsened in the last two years. The loss of flexible working arrangements agreed due to Covid-19 was mentioned by unions from a range of sectors. Accord said they had been “replaced by a dictatorial approach”, while PCS said that civil servants are being forced to attend the workplace for 60 per cent of working time, and Community reported flexible working agreements being scrapped or diluted and some members had been forced to return to the workplace.
The equality bargaining climate does not currently appear to be on an expansionary path as far as employers are concerned and it is to be hoped that, by the next Audit in four years’ time, the change of government will have created a more conducive environment.
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