UK workers are facing the same problems across the country. We should join together to fight them

For many people, insecure work and insecure housing go hand in hand – in fact they’re joined at the hip. Without guaranteed hours, it’s hard to put down a deposit or pay rent, let alone actually buy somewhere to provide long-term security. So the combination, together with immigration stress, poor health, and the lack of the social connection that people used to find in the workplace, leaves people trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty and insecurity. It’s the same problem that the Foyer model aimed to solve for young people, until the austerity programme of the coalition government put an end to the funding that supported a joined up approach.

Now an experiment in Scotland is showing the way for workers of all ages.

A van with a UNISON logo is parked up near a care home. This is where the union holds meetings for the care workers: in the van. It’s a strategy developed in response to care workers being spread evenly across the city, both in location and time – there are literally care workers working in every area, at all times of day and night. They can’t all gather at a central trade union office, because they are working shifts, and it’s expensive to get into town. So the workers decided the union should be mobile, and there should be spaces for workers to meet, whenever they need to, wherever they are.

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As time goes on, it becomes clear that the issues raised in the van aren’t siloed. Insecure work makes it hard for people to keep a roof over their head, exploitative work conditions damage health and low pay means people need to know how to navigate the complicated social security system.

So the lead organiser, now retired, asks UNISON if he can use the van in a different way. This time, the rota of organisers in the van are from different unions, together with community organisers with expertise in housing, health, benefit, immigration. And this time, the van parks in the centre of a community, not outside one workplace. Everyone is invited in, not just one group of workers but their neighbours, families and friends.

With continued financial support, the approach has been so successful in Edinburgh that the team have created three physical hubs in Edinburgh, Craigmillar and Falkirk.

This could be big. Unions have the numbers to make a huge impact on poverty and exploitation. Unite has trained 50 members to offer benefit support including on housing. Imagine the impact if that was replicated across the six million union members.

But cooperation isn’t easy. Frustratingly, it’s pretty unusual in the UK for unions to step outside their traditional roles and embrace community-based collaboration.

Conditions in the local textile factories in Leicester – wage theft, the ‘blue eyed boy’ system penalising workers who raise issues, lack of formal contracts – can be abusive. In one case an employee was marched to a cash point to withdraw and hand over the cash that represented the difference between the minimum wage they were paid on the books, and the lower illegal wage the employer was willing to pay them.

It was a community organisation not a union that got the stolen wages back. Traditional union organising works for stable groups of workers in defined workplaces, increasingly in the public sector.

Gig workers, whose housing and other problems can absorb the time and money that might be spent on union membership, are much more challenging to organise. Yet they have the least power and the most need of support.

The Scottish example shows it can be done if unions and community organisations pool their strengths. And in the face of the growing power of the far right, and the hostile environment for migrants, the need for working together is becoming urgent.

Stephen Stark from the Ron Todd Foundation, sums up the challenges, saying: “Organisers face a growing threat from the far right and intensifying racism in workplaces and communities. While both unions and community groups want to challenge these forces, their efforts are often disconnected: unions organise within workplaces, community groups organise around neighbourhoods and social issues. This separation weakens collective power, leaves vulnerable workers and communities exposed, and makes it harder to sustain campaigns.”

We think this is so important that we’re making it the theme of the fourth New Organising Conference from August 28 to 30 in Liverpool: Roots and Branches – Unions and Communities in Common Struggle. Find out more here.

Carolyn Hayman OBE is a board member of the New Organising Collaborative which runs the New Organising Conference.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

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