Earlier this year, voice.wales published a critique of the Wales TUC’s approach to partnership working – a model whereby trade unions work with employers – by Morgan Rhys Powell. Here, Joe Allen and Nisreen Mansour from the Wales TUC respond to the article and argue that unions can make the model work in defence of workers’ rights.
Cover image: RMT strike solidarity rally, Cardiff, by Ka Long Tung
The idea that trade unions working in social partnership with governments and employers represents either a naïve mistake or some form of class betrayal is not a new one. It’s a charge that’s often levelled at unions in Wales and – naturally – it has been regularly debated within the movement itself.
But Morgan Rhys Powell’s recent article on voice.wales gives a helpfully full and clear account of the case against social partnership.
It raises important questions about strategic priorities, the scope and ambition of the proposed Social Partnership and Public Procurement Bill, and the idea that Welsh unions have an excessively close relationship with Welsh Government.
These are legitimate concerns – particularly at a time when workers are facing huge and immediate cost of living challenges and when we’re in the early days of what is likely to be a wave of strike action across the public and private sectors.
But the case that Powell makes is frequently undermined by a reluctance to engage with the political and constitutional context in which social partnership has developed in Wales.
In building an argument on the idea that social partnership in Wales started in Mark Drakeford’s leadership manifesto in 2018 (“Social partnership has become a watchword for Wales TUC in the last four years, first proposed in Mark Drakeford’s leadership manifesto and gradually put into practice in various public bodies”) the article neglects the decades long history of the approach in Wales in favour of a brief history of its failings at a UK and European level.
Equally there is little acknowledgement of how the devolution settlement massively influences what social partnership looks like here in Wales. With no control over employment rights and very limited leverage over the private sector, Welsh Government is often left as a bystander when the issues under the spotlight are in workplaces beyond the devolved public sector. It’s this settlement – and the continued uncertainty around it – that has to a large extent set the parameters for the forthcoming social partnership legislation.
And crucially, while the clear implication throughout the article is that social partnership is simply focussed on compromise and that it weakens the bargaining positions of individual unions, there are no examples provided and nor is there an explanation of the causal relationship that would create such a weakening.
We at the Wales TUC would argue that in the context of a hostile legislative and political environment at a UK level, social partnership in fact represents a limited but effective way to maximise workers’ influence on devolved policy and – done correctly – it can complement rather than undermine worker power at a workplace level.
Social Partnership: History and Role
Wales’s social partnership model long predates the creation of the Senedd.
Anyone who has read Joe England’s history of the Wales TUC (1974-2004) will see the role it has played as a pressure group for workers’ interests in relation to industrial policy. John Morris, Secretary of State for Wales from 1974-79, when the Wales TUC was in its infancy, already used the term “partnership” to describe the relationship with the Wales TUC.
On the nature of partnership working, Morris said: “[w]e will discuss, we will argue; we will agree, and we will differ.” The idea that partnership working is simply about compromise is incorrect and has been so from the outset.
The reality is that social partnership discussion may not end in compromise at all. But putting in place mechanisms for dialogue reduces the likelihood of dispute. This benefits workers and their employers. One union officer summed this up nicely in relation to the recent industrial action, contrasting the dialogue-based approach to change taken in Wales with the confrontational style of the UK Government.
Social partnership is about creating this forum for dialogue and fostering better industrial relations, but it certainly doesn’t determine them or mean that union representatives are seeking any less for workers.
Trades unions are not giving away their industrial power by committing to social partnership working. They are no less able to challenge an employer, lodge a dispute or take any other form of industrial action because of social partnership. It wouldn’t make any sense for a union to give away their power like this. Our core role is to organise and represent the collective interests of workers, and to do so we must retain our independence from both the employer and the state.
What is Welsh Social Partnership?
In the last two decades, Welsh social partnership has focussed on creating arrangements for dialogue between unions, employers and Welsh ministers, where relevant. The purpose of this has been to inform and advise on policy development, highlight common challenges and foster the conditions for better industrial relations.
This has been most apparent in the devolved public sector – long standing arrangements exist for health (the Welsh Partnership Forum) and local government (the Joint Council for Wales).
While these forums proved very useful during the pandemic to inform the emergency response, they did not prevent health and local government unions running indicative ballots on last year’s pay offers, proving the point that social partnership is in no way a barrier to traditional forms of industrial relations. The dialogue-based approach to managing change has been enshrined in a cross-public sector agreement (Partnership and Managing Change, negotiated through the Workforce Partnership Council).
Private sector social partnership also has a much longer history in the modern devolved state than has been acknowledged. The Government of Wales Act (2004) mandated Welsh ministers to establish a ‘business scheme’ to consult with business on matters which relate to their interests. The social partnership working that stems from this resulted in the ProAct and ReAct initiatives in response to the 2008 financial crisis, which protected good unionised jobs and helped workers to retrain for new careers. It also made sure that the collective voice of workers was heard by the Economy Minister during the covid pandemic, like when we pressured him to provide funding for taxi drivers when they were initially overlooked for support.
The Social Partnership and Public Procurement Bill is the next step in social partnership working, building on unions’ ambition to see this way of working applied more consistently across Welsh Government and within public bodies. It will give organised workers more of a say over policy matters in Wales than we have ever had before by mandating public bodies to agree their well-being objectives with them and it will create a national Social Partnership Council to guide this. We also hope it will result in better employment standards resulting from procurement spend.
Are unions too close to Welsh Government?
This is a good question to ask and something we continuously reflect on as a movement.
Our approach is set by our affiliates through our democratic structure. Our Congress in May reaffirmed the Wales TUC’s commitment to social partnership and agreed that we will contribute to the Welsh Government’s review of social partnership arrangements.
This is very important for us as it is not necessarily the proximity of unions to government that is the biggest challenge right now – the bigger issue is the time union officials and reps must dedicate to social partnership working. This issue comes up across the sectors, and it is not unknown for unions to pull away from certain parts of social partnership so they can dedicate the necessary time to activities they know will deliver more for the workers they represent – whether that’s collective bargaining, organising, industrial action or representing individual workers.
The independence of our representation in social partnership has not been compromised and it is incorrect to suggest that the Social Partnership Council will be any different. The Social Partnership and Public Procurement Bill requires the First Minister to only appoint members which the Wales TUC has nominated. We will be establishing a democratic trade union side to nominate these individuals, and we could not support a Bill which left it to government to decide who represents workers.
It is also inaccurate to compare modern Welsh social partnership with the relationship between shopfloor trade unionism and the UK trade union leadership in the 1960s and 1970s. To put it simply, Wales is simply too small to have a significant problem with disconnect between union membership and its leadership.
The officers we work with who sit on social partnership committees (either because they have been elected to the post or appointed by the democratic leadership of their unions or sector) deal with individual casework, they organise and they represent workers in collective bargaining negotiations. Many of them have done the jobs they are now representing workers in. They are working with a devolved government that has very limited powers over employment, a hostile UK administration and some of the most stringent trade union legislation in Europe.
While we can point to the recent RMT industrial action and acknowledge that social partnership working helped to avoid strike action at Transport for Wales over the summer, the low level of industrial action overall is far more rooted in the legal barriers to this than social partnership. And the fact that ASLEF were recently in dispute with Transport for Wales further proves the point that social partnership in no way interferes with a union’s power to pursue formal industrial action.
Industrial action requires strong membership who are engaged in the purpose of collective action, and the same is true for social partnership. Unless partnership working is used to grow and bolster trade unionism across Wales’s labour market – and, in particular, to secure greater collective bargaining coverage so that workers can negotiate their fair share of the product of their labour – then it will not deliver for workers.
The goal of the labour movement is the complete organisation of workers, and social partnership must play a role in achieving this. And it is also about the health of the union side of the partnership.
We need to be able to consult with workers and have a thriving democratic process sitting behind these arrangements. Currently, this isn’t consistent across the labour market and we need to consider aligning organising priorities to social partnership work, including in sectors like social care to better exploit organising opportunities.
It is even the case that pursuing strike action (and other forms of direct action) has a role to play in relation to social partnership as it is such a clear demonstration of workers’ feelings, influencing both employers’ and government’s approach.
Wales TUC and our affiliated trades unions are pursuing social partnership to strengthen trade unionism and industrial relations in Wales. We stand in solidarity with all striking workers and their struggle is shared by much of the labour market who are facing the biggest cost of living squeeze for generations.
The reality is that those unions advocating for partnership working in Wales and strike action are part of the same Wales TUC.
