| Whilst this is good on paper, this is actually pretty bad, and GMB should be treated with more scrutiny. This seems to be working better for the employer and the union than the workers. The fact is that Uber workers who are members of the App Drivers and Couriers Union, one of the smaller UK unions, got recognition in the UK Supreme court that drivers are employees. They brought an effective legal challenge against Uber that made the firm recognise contractors (in name only) as employees. This was a landmark win that made a real difference in the worker's lives. Clearly Uber was under threat, since this effective challenge by a smaller union built a lot of momentum for a muscular recognition deal. So they jumped before they were pushed, and recognised GMB, since it was the best deal for them as the employer. ADCU's statement: https://www.adcu.org.uk/news-posts/statement-on-uber-respons... If you read the FT report, GMB agreed with Uber that there will be no right for the workers to negotiate over pay or minimum wage, which is one of the key reasons (and benefits) of having a recognised union in the workplace. True, the conditions of precarious workers are terrible, but also the pay and minimum wage is abysmal, and the employers in these situations are basically only operating the way they do because of the terrible wages they pay their workers. Uber drivers have to pay for their car and fuel out of their own pocket, so in this case the employer has every interest to not negotiate wages, since they pay little to no operating costs. (Snippet quoted: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E2WG95hXoAIl12J.jpg) The Uber workers are now in a pickle. Due to UK trade union laws, if they wanted to switch unions to a better more militant one, they would have to wait til the recognition agreement's been in place 3 years, and then wait 3+ years until they can apply for recognition with another union, which is a condition baked in to all recognition deals in the UK. This kind of inertia is the death of any organised labour movement amongst workers. As is clear, this is what the trade union act of 92 was supposed to do -- make it impossible for workers to quickly build momentum when advocating for better conditions for themselves. So in signing a bad deal for a bit of press coverage, GMB are hanging Uber workers out to dry before they've begun, potentially for 6 years if the workers dislike the deal. Precarious workers aren't served by a yellow union rearranging deckchairs with the employer, they deserve to It's potentially a worse situation than doing nothing at all, or waiting for better terms from the employer. Workers deserve a militant, fighting union. In fact, in "big three" GMB are far less militant than even their counterparts, Unite and Unison. In 2019, Unite and Unison both balloted 245 and 234 times respectively, while GMB only managed a bit more than half that (125). Now, GMB have half the members (roughly) of those two, 600k compared to the 1.2m and 1.3m of the other two. But then you have the case of smaller, more militant unions, like the RMT, who did 126 ballots in the same year, with only 80k members! Data: https://airtable.com/shrEgY32g6wTezsmV/tbl92F0cWh74D8al3 Proportionally it's not about size of the union. GMB is, for my money, deserving of a spot in the "big three". And indeed is of a size where it should be holding more ballots and sticking up for it's members more. Even if Unite or Unison had signed this deal, they wouldn't have signed away one of their workers key demands: the right to be paid a living wage. GMB should be congratulated for it's recent work on "fire and rehire" campaign at British gas, but in this cynical expansion into new industries, it's proving itself woefully inadequate to represent workers in the 21st century, and could turn into another "yellow" union which exists only to serve it's own bureaucrats and robber baron patrons. |
