Salford City Council
The council’s reliance on lower-paid agency workers to help provide its refuse collection, cleansing and recycling services was successfully challenged in 2007, resulting in a commitment to the use of a permanent workforce. The agreement reached with Unite involved establishing the number of workers that the council actually required to provide these services, recruitment to permanent posts, training to eliminate the need for agency cover, and the use of temporary directly-employed posts (rather than agency) if cover is required.
Employer
Salford City Council provides refuse collection, street cleansing and recycling services. In June-July 2007 these services became the focus of a dispute over the treatment of agency workers.
Unions
The union involved in the 2007 dispute was the T&G section of Unite.
Workforce
In the summer of 2007 the workforce was made up of around 140 full-time street cleansing, refuse collection and recycling workers and around 100 agency staff. Eighteen months on the number of agency staff was down to about 30, and they are now mainly used for seasonal work (eg summer green recycling).
Agency workers
At the time of the dispute agency workers were on lower pay rates despite in many cases working for the council for extended periods. Labourers working for two agencies supplying refuse workers for the council were earning £5.35 an hour compared with £7.92 for council staff while 50 of these casual workers had worked on council contracts for over 12 months.
The experience of one agency worker was highlighted in a briefing (issued by the TUC and individual unions in support of a parliamentary bill to implement equal treatment for agency workers) on 22 February 2008.
John, a 21-year old cleansing worker who had worked for two years as an agency worker at Salford City Council:
“I had to arrive at work at 5am then wait for three hours in a line with other people who are waiting for work like me. The managers would then come out, clip board in hand, walk along the line, and pick people who would have work for that day based on whether or not you had the correct Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), which we had to pay for. The rest of us would be sent home, around 8am, with no work and no pay”.
Commitment to a permanent workforce
The T&G section of Unite considers agency workers to be co-workers and had negotiated rights for them such as the provision of foul weather clothing. In 2007 the union organised a petition calling for the end of unfair treatment for agency workers and on 27 June began a campaign of industrial action to achieve this. It was followed by two further one-day strikes in July, and led to a new agreement between the union and the authority on the use of agency staff.
The agreement that ended the dispute arose from negotiations led by Unite senior organiser Mick Cashman (who tragically died during the campaign, and to whom the successful outcome was dedicated). Unite described the resulting agreement as a commitment to 100% service delivery by a permanent workforce. This was to follow on from a review designed to establish staffing levels on the basis of service need, and the transfer of recycling services to council contracts. In more detail:
Reviews: There was to be a review of refuse collection services and subsequently, of street cleansing. The outcome of the review would establish the required number of staff to meet the service need.
Recruitment to permanent contracts: Additional staff over and above the (then) current establishment would be recruited to permanent council contracts within three months of the end of the reviews (a number of former agency workers subsequently got jobs with the council).
Recycling service: Recycling which was then operated by agency workers would transfer to a service delivered by permanent staff employed directly by the local authority by 1 November 2007 at the latest (the service has since gone from being 100% agency to about 90% full-time).
Timetable: Some workers were to commence permanent employment within days of the agreement being approved, in positions that had previously been filled with casual staff.
Cover: Pre-planned holiday and long-term sickness were to be covered by temporary workers on three-month contracts with the council (this has largely although not completely replaced reliance on agency staff for that purpose).
Training: The agreement provided for the development of fully-funded training opportunities for employees who were then non-LGV drivers, so that in-house driver cover would replace the reliance on agency workers. Unite reports that a number of union members were trained as a result of this agreement, including drivers who gained large goods vehicle (LGV) licenses, and labourers who gained driving licenses, through subsidised courses.
LRD 30/01/2009
