Union recognition rights for a large contingent of agency staff taken on by the expanding British Cattle Movement Service (BCMS) led on to a campaign for more secure forms of employment, including skills training for agency staff. This has progressed to the point that there were no longer are any staff on agency contracts at the service at the time that this report was written.

Employer

The British Cattle Movement Service (BCMS) is part of the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra). It was originally set up in 1998 to establish monitoring services in the wake of the BSE outbreak, subsequently extending its remit to cover other diseases such as Foot and Mouth. It now runs the Cattle Tracing System (CTS) from its base in Workington, Cumbria.

Unions

The union involved is the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), the largest of the civil service unions.

Workforce

By 2005 the service had a workforce of several hundred including roughly 350 agency staff. A further 330 new agency staff were then engaged to administer permanent work (an annual subsidy to farmers). Plans to engage a further 170 agency staff would have taken the total to around 850 agency staff, working alongside 350 permanent staff.

Agency workers

Temporary staff were provided by an agency called Adecco but these were hardly “temporary” jobs: Three quarters of the agency workers had been working at BCMS for more than two years, at the time that the union took matters in hand, and a number of these had been there for over five years.

PCS understood that Adecco was being paid £10.23 an hour for each individual worker when the agency staff themselves (many of them aged between 16-18) were receiving the minimum wage. Despite the Department claiming that the new staff were to be employed on a temporary basis, it was beginning to look like a more permanent arrangement, with accommodation costing £3 million due to be built to house them.

From recognition to employment

The union’s first step to providing greater security was in achieving a recognition agreement with the agency itself. But the focus then shifted to achieving more secure forms of employment, either as permanent civil service jobs or fixed-term appointments on civil service terms and conditions. Access to skills training for agency staff helped this process along.

Recognition

In 2005 the local PCS Branch began a campaign at Workington to organise and gain recognition in relation to agency workers. Its aims were to campaign for permanent posts; help agency workers win terms and conditions equivalent to those of their permanent colleagues; and include agency workers in the membership and activity of the local union branch.

The campaign had its own recruitment literature and site meetings were also held. The initial success of this campaign meant that around 90% of agency staff joined the union and some activists were elected. Members’ meetings were then held and local campaign literature was produced including leaflets, stickers and posters.

The experience inspired support among directly-employed staff for a campaign for equal rights. This was pursued through writing letters to MPs, providing the PCS parliamentary group with regular updates, and press releases which ensured excellent local press coverage of the issue. A campaign to involve the community was launched bringing together the support of local trade unions and other community groups. This culminated in a public rally with guest speakers including the local MP.

In early September 2006, Adecco staff voted overwhelmingly for trade union recognition in an independent ballot. Adecco’s initial refusal to voluntarily recognise the union meant that PCS agency worker members had to use the legal route to force recognition through the Central Arbitration Committee (the first time that a trade union in the UK had taken this process to this stage with an employment agency). In a 64% turnout, 100% of all voters voted for union recognition.

The Industrial Relations and Facilities Agreement between Adecco UK and PCS gave the union sole negotiating and bargaining rights on all matters relating to the terms and conditions of employment (pay, hours of work and holidays) of staff employed by Adecco. No relevant terms and conditions of employment were to be amended without prior negotiation. The agreement included rights to represent, to organise and train, and for the agency to provide the necessary facilities, which extended to include a Union Learning Representative and a lead Health and Safety representative.

Skills

Alongside the campaign for comparable rights for agency staff, an exercise was held to improve the skills of the workforce. This led to 35 level 1 and 2 literacy accreditations which helped the agency workers in applying for the permanent posts.

Fixed-term and permanent posts

The campaign secured 270 civil service jobs: 100 of these were permanent, the rest being fixed-term appointments (FTA). Thirty of the agency staff secured permanent jobs (others being filled by transfers within the civil service). The literacy accreditations that the temporary staff gained through union extra skills training helped staff in their applications for the new posts.

The FTA contracts were up for renewal in March 2009 and at the time that this report was compiled the union did not know whether they would be extended or not. Nevertheless, it pointed out that the staff affected had enjoyed up to two years on full civil service terms and conditions - far better than the agency’s terms and conditions.

The union branch no longer had any relationship with Adecco, which removed its on-site office shortly after the recognition agreement was signed. The union understood that the reason for this was as the number of agency staff dwindled so much that there was no need for the agency to be based on site.

Looking to the future, there was nothing to stop BCMS using agency workers again, but the union has been able to restrict this to very short term needs, and anything of “any length” will be fulfilled with people on FTA contracts.

This text is an updated account based on an original report by the union involved (PCS).

LRD 30/01/09

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