Secret aid worker: Surely NGOs should embrace trade unions, not block them?
Imagine a sweatshop in Bangladesh, where the workers want to unionise, but are scuppered at every turn. Before any request to management is made, the CEO informs all staff that the company sees no need for a union.
This article titled “Secret aid worker: Surely NGOs should embrace trade unions, not block them?” was written by Secret aid worker, for theguardian.com on Tuesday 22nd November 2016 13.00 UTCImagine a sweatshop in Bangladesh, where the workers want to unionise, but are scuppered at every turn. Before any request to management is made, the CEO informs all staff that the company sees no need for a union. While preparing for a meeting to discuss the potential benefits of unionisation, senior management insists on editing all communications sent to staff from the organisers. After the meeting, staff are intimidated and threatened by directors until the plan dies a premature death.
As an NGO worker, you would probably be appalled; you may even take up the cause. But what if it’s not a sweatshop in Bangladesh, but instead the London office of a global NGO? What would you do? If you’re a worker, you acquiesce silently. If you’re a manager, you toe the CEO’s line.
Sadly, this isn’t a hypothetical case. It’s happening in some international NGOs in the UK today. People who have tried simply to broach the subject of unions in their organisations have faced tactics not dissimilar to those workers in developing countries experience every day.
As agencies whose key mandate is to improve social justice abroad, we seem to have a double standard here at home, fearing unions rather than embracing them. It’s a clear case of “do as we say, not as we do”.
Why are some of our HR departments so hostile to unions? Shouldn’t they be looking to align our values? It seems not. I know of a colleague who argued with their HR department about why a development organisation that fights for people’s rights should have a union, only to be told by the head of HR: “We’re not a human rights organisation, we’re a charity.” Apparently charities don’t deserve the same rights as everyone else.
In my own organisation, pay and conditions are imposed while the responsibility for “consultation” is allocated to a group of employees who have no experience of negotiating on these matters. Nice as they are, they’re unelected, unrepresentative and, in my humble opinion, have no skills or legitimacy needed to negotiate on the behalf of staff. It’s a far cry from the democratic participation normally ascribed to a proper union.
The myths around unions that seem to dominate mainstream media haven’t helped: unions are adversarial, they strike at the drop of a hat, the basic rights that unions once fought for are now covered by law, unions are outmoded and no longer necessary.
Of course, as workers in the UK, we hardly endure sweatshop conditions and we are fortunate to enjoy decent employment laws. But it doesn’t make the role of unions redundant.
The international development sector is hardly the model employer. In some cases our benefits, such as flexible working or maternity and paternity leave, are at the bottom of the barrel. Support given to workers, especially those on the front line of humanitarian work, is regularly thought of as lax, and there is a growing discrepancy between senior pay and the rest. Burnout is endemic, bullying and sexism isn’t uncommon.
Aside from the basic protection to workers afforded by law, it seems there are a number of reasons why unions in our sector should be embraced, rather than feared. At best, they will work to tackle some of the issues listed above and will certainly help us model our behaviours in practice, giving us stronger moral authority when working oversees. At a minimum, they will improve communications between staff and management, and could enhance staff morale and commitment, something the sector badly needs.
It’s a shame that staff were not able to unionise in my NGO and I don’t see things changing soon. Directors are too busy fighting their own internal battles to deal with a union, and there’s no way we’d get the requisite 50% staff membership to force the issue.
Even if everything was fine between staff and management where I work, it’s the principle that’s at stake. We should be living our values, not saying one thing and doing another.
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