Labour's trade union reforms: top five issues for schools and colleges

Labour has promised a ‘new partnership of cooperation between trade unions, employers and government’. It intends to strengthen the rights of working people by reforming the existing framework for industrial relations and collective bargaining which will make it easier for workers to join a union and to go on strike.

What impact will this have on the education sector? 

The state education sector is already unionised. So, the government's proposals to simplify the recognition process is unlikely to have a significant impact on them. However, changes to the rules around strikes and union access could do.

1. Changes to strike ballot thresholds

In 2017, the government introduced the Trade Union Act 2016, designed to make it more difficult for workers to go on strike by:

• imposing a minimum 50% threshold of union members who cast a vote and, in important public services (which includes schools and colleges providing education for children of compulsory school age), at least 40% of all eligible members must support strike action; and
• setting a six-month time limit for industrial action, after which time, the union must re-ballot its member if it wants to continue to strike

The government has said that it will scrap the threshold requirements as part of its overhaul of trade union laws. Once that's happened, we expect that the law will revert to the previous position - which required that a simple majority of those voting in the ballot needed to be in favour of industrial action. That will make it easier for unions to get a mandate to strike but, in fairness, the existing thresholds haven't prevented significant strikes in the education sector over the past few years. 

The government has also said that it will modernise the ballot process to allow secure, electronic ballots. This will make it easier for workers to respond to strike ballots and for unions to count votes. 

2. Repeal of minimum service requirements

The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 came into force last year. It allows the Secretary of State to make regulations imposing minimum service levels during strike action in six sectors, including schools and colleges. The government failed to reach a voluntary agreement with unions about the appropriate level of cover schools and colleges have to provide during strikes and launched a consultation on this which closed on 30 January 2024. 

The Labour party said that it would repeal this Act in its plans to make work pay. The education sector will not, therefore, have to comply with the proposed minimum service requirements.

3. Union access to workplaces

Recognised trade unions have specific rights to attend the workplace, primarily through the entitlement of their officials and members to take time off for union-related activities and duties but they don't have a general right to enter workplaces to recruit and organise members. 

The government says that these rules ‘no longer fit with modern working practices' and it intends to make changes to ’ensure that union members and workers are able to access a union at work through a regulated and responsible manner, for recruitment and organising purposes'. It talks about providing ‘reasonable access’ and providing a ‘transparent framework’ and ‘clear rules’ agreed in consultation with unions and business ‘that allow union officials to meet, represent, recruit and organise members, provided they give appropriate notice and comply with reasonable requests of the employer’. 

That's quite vague and we'll need further information to put flesh on the bones. It's possible that these reforms may include a digital right of access which could include requiring employers to provide a digital notice board for the union to communicate with the workforce. 

The government has also pledged to ‘formally monitor’ how the new rules work in practice to ‘ensure trade union officials and workplaces are complying with their responsibilities, and the rules allowing access are used proportionately and effectively’.  

4. New rights for workplace rep's

Currently, union workplace representatives have the right to:

• reasonable paid time off from their job to carry out trade union duties and to undertake trade union training; and
• reasonable unpaid time off for participating in trade union activities

The government has said it will create new rights and protections for trade union rep's and will strengthen protections against unfair dismissal, intimidation, harassment, threats and blacklisting, but hasn't provided any detail about what these might look like in practice. 

5. Requirement to tell staff they can join a union

The government has said that it will impose a new duty on employers to inform all new employees that they have a right to join a union, and to remind all staff about this on a regular basis. This information will have to be included in the contracts of employment/s.1 statements of all new starters once the legislation comes into force.

This is a huge step change - even for schools and colleges in the public sector that already recognise one or more trade unions with whom they have agreed to collectively bargain. 

Current data suggests that there has been a decline in proportion of education staff who are union members over the last 30 years, from around 57% in 1995 to 49% in 2022. Whether these proposals will lead to an increase in those figures remains to be seen. Our view is that employees will only join a union and continue to pay subscriptions if they perceive that they are getting value for money. 

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