TGWU: Manchester Piccadilly Gardens Dispute
Report by TGWU strikers, Colin Carr
Published: 19/07/03


Fighting Fund Appeal
Keep our Picket Line Going

We are currently in dispute with our Employer (DAF Electrical). We are Skilled Electricians and members of the TGWU. The Reasons for our action at Piccadilly Gardens No1 Site are:
The Employer refuses to consult with our Union Official over redundancies of our Site Representatives and Skilled Electricians.
Repeated late payment of wages
Our employer’s use of unskilled workers to carry out Electrical work for as little as half the skilled rate, despite Skilled Electricians being the cheapest in the European Union.

This use of unskilled workers is indicative of our industry. We call on all Electricians and Trade Unionists to support our picket financially and eradicate the contraventions of Health & Safety and our National Agreement. Please give generously.

We must win this struggle for all of our jobs throughout the Industry.

Fighting Fund Contact 07813 456 831



8 July 2003

Dear Colleague,

I am writing to appeal for your support of 11 TGWU members who are in struggle against their former employer on a construction site in Manchester City Centre.

Our members, all skilled electricians, were faced with a number of problems on site and in April they elected shop stewards and confronted management.

The issues of disagreement were, non payment of wages/holiday pay, reneging on a promise to take the members on as directly employed, victimisation of our activists and the use of unskilled (cheap) labour to undertake skilled electrical work. The TGWU wrote to the employer seeking a meeting to discuss these issues and the employer refused to talk to the union saying they did not recognise the TGWU. On May 16th the employer announced redundancies, despite there being plenty of work, and despite the fact that they were still using unskilled workers to carry out skilled tasks. Our members ought consultation but were refused.

In protest at the company’s refusal to consult with the TGWU the members walked out in protest. The union tried to facilitate a return to work but the company refused to negotiate and declared that they would never allow the TGWU members back on site. Within 4 days of the members protest they were all sacked and replaced by unskilled workers. Our members were sacked for belonging to the TGWU and seeking consultation with the union of their choosing. They have been locked-out for 7 weeks now and have remained resolute in their struggle with all 11 members still in dispute and continuing to protest outside their place of work. We have processed applications to the Employment Tribunal and are waiting a date for Tribunal. Although our main aim is to win reinstatement for our sacked members, the use of unskilled workers for skilled tasks is of paramount importance and must be stamped out. The union has been successful in forcing the HSE to investigate this unsafe practice, but it is becoming such a widespread practice that the stand being taken in Manchester is of national importance and is being undertaken on behalf of all skilled workers.

The Regional Secretary has set up a Hardship Fund to assist our members and funds are now desperately needed to sustain them in their struggle. Please support our members in any way you can, all donations should be made out to Piccadilly Gardens Hardship Fund and should be sent to: Mark Newton, Acting Regional Finance Officer, T. &G. W. U., Transport House, Merchants Quay, Salford Quays, Salford, M50 3SG

The members can be contacted directly on 07813 456831 and would welcome your direct input/support.

Thanking you in anticipation of your support in this regard.

Yours fraternally,

Colin G Carr
Regional Industrial Organiser

A well-organised workplace depends on having good union reps. To be the shop steward or workplace rep is not the easiest job, and to do it on top of your work and family commitments can be a real challenge.

The trade union movement relies on the dedication of workplace reps. They give up their time voluntarily to help improve the pay and conditions of their fellow workers. They are the backbone of the trade union movement.

And that’s why the TUC’s New Unionism Project has developed the union reps’ website. The site is dedicated solely to union representatives and stewards, and it will provide reps with information and resources, as well as giving them the TUC’s first-ever electronic newsletter dedicated to all workplace reps. The newsletter has been developed in partnership with Labour Research and it will help to create a real community of union activists.

Just a word on the background: the website has been developed as part of the TUC’s ’Union Reps - Winning Respect at Work’ campaign.

The campaign aims to develop the training and support that the TUC and its affiliated unions provide to union reps, as well as encouraging a new layer of union members to become active and take on the rep’s role.

In our Millennial Challenge, the TUC set a target of reaching a million new members. That target demands that we have a similar goal for the recruitment and development of union reps. So we have to do all we can to make sure that reps get the support and training they need to do the important job that they do. We have to reach trade union reps who have difficulty getting release from work. We have to accommodate reps with family responsibilities. And we have make sure that our courses meet the needs of reps whatever their work pattern.

We know that half of new reps receive no basic training in first 12 months and that only a third have progressed beyond Stage 1 and 2 . But there is also the gender gap to consider. Men do better on training than women. Four-fifths of female reps say they have received training, compared to 90 per cent of men.

And this training is still overwhelmingly provided through colleges with just 8 per cent using distance learning and a mere 2 per cent participating in online training. My hope is that this website is just the first stage in the creation of range of web-based tools to support and train our reps, and that this helps us to reach ever greater numbers of potential reps.

We also need to look at the profile of our reps. The ’typical’ rep is male, aged between 36 and 45, he has been a union member for some 20 years and a rep for six years.

But there are gradual changes. With the new rights for union learning reps, we have seen an increasing number of women, black trade unionists and younger workers take on that role. The TUC has trained more than 2,500 so far, who have helped more than 50,000 union members to access learning opportunities. And the legal right to take time off to promote learning could see as many as 22,000 learning reps reaching out to half a million employees by the end of the decade.

And as we reach out to a new generation of union activists, we have to recognise that many of our new reps will be drawn from parts of the economy where work is not structured in a predictable pattern, where release is harder to obtain and where the training has to revolve around a mixture of work, family and community involvement.

The average union rep looks after 36 members, but in many workplaces there are unfilled reps’ positions. That shows the scale of the challenge that the union movement needs to address: we need to encourage union members to take on the role of the rep and we need to overcome the barriers which put people off from volunteering to be a rep.

One of the main constraints is the time that being a rep can take up. Over half of our reps spend up to 10 hours a week on their reps’ duties, but more than a quarter give up more that 10 hours. For many they are giving up their own time to carry out their reps’ duties. This means the trade union movement has to examine the extent to which workplace reps actually receive the reasonable paid release to carry out their duties.

So these are our challenges:

we need to recruit more reps and from a more diverse base;
we need to look at the role of the rep and the support they receive;
we need to examine the amount of time that reps spend on their duties;
and we need to refresh the arguments for paid release for reps’ duties.
The launch of this website is just one part of our campaign to help reps to win respect for our members - but I hope it will be an important symbol of the importance we attach to being the union rep.

 http://www.UNIONREPS.org.uk

These guys have been out picketing every day for weeks now. They must be feeling the pinch in a really bad way, so please do all you can to help.

Serious respect to them for fighting.