Lessons from the TUC Equality Audit 2018

A rule change in 2001 committed the TUC and its affiliated unions to promote equality in all aspects of our work. Every two years, the TUC carries out an audit to establish how we’re doing as a movement against this objective, and covers areas of collective bargaining, union membership, rules and internal structures.

The 2018 audit was published in September and presented to the TUC Congress (past audits can be found on the TUC Website).

Accord has participated in the equality audit in the past, where possible, but it’s not always been a priority - when we consider the size of the union and the resources we have, it’s sometimes a challenge to do everything that we’d want to do in the allotted time. However, this year Accord has taken steps to ensure we have a clear line of accountability: this is just one of many reasons why it was important for us to establish the role of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Officer.

Accord’s Chris Rimell says:

“It’s important for us to participate in the audit process. While we may not have all the answers, we can share best practices and collaborate with other unions in order to collectively address the issues facing the movement. We can all benefit from ensuring we have inclusive structures that make a difference on matters of equality.”

A little about the results of the audit:

• The response rate increased to 76% (from 67% in 2016) and represents 97% of all affiliated union members.
• The data shows that disabled workers are more likely to be members of a union than those without disabilities — and as other research has shown there may be a clear need for this since disabled workers fair less favourably in terms of access to employment, maintaining employment and pay.
• It’s also true to say that disabled workers are well represented in union structures, whereas there are challenges in representation for other minority groups.
• Only half of responding unions monitor data in relation to young workers which is quite a considerable issue when considering the challenges of renewal in the ageing union structures — young members are under-represented in all areas of union structures.
• There’s a lack of data when it comes to LGBT+ workers, and only 7 unions were able to provide data to the TUC for analysis. This is set against a backdrop of there being very little by way of official data for the overall population, so it’s not just a union issue!
• Smaller unions are less likely to carry out equality monitoring than larger unions which may be due to limited resources.
• 27 of the responding unions have national equality officers, of which, 11 have other responsibilities in their organisations other than equalities.
• Unions are creating more informal networks.

There are five key recommendations for unions, and I’ll share with you what Accord is doing against each of them…

1. The structures of unions should be assessed to ensure the removal of any barriers that prevent specific equality groups from progressing through the internal structures.
   Accord has been looking at the overall lay structure of the union (everything outside of the union’s paid employees - so the Principal Exectuvie Council (PEC), other executive committees and workplace reps), and this is moving along at pace. Through our regional reps’ meetings (still ongoing at the time of writing), we’re consulting on the changes that have been proposed by a working party member from the PEC. Through the proposed changes, we’re looking to remove some of the barriers to engagement, however there’ll still be work to do outside of this. That’s why we’ve launched the Accord Equality Group, to assist in evaluating what other barriers exist and how we’ll overcome them. If you’re interested in joining our equality group, get in touch.
2. Significant focus is required on membership & staff monitoring to ensure that we can truly evaluate the effectiveness of policy and campaigning efforts.
   Accord launched an updated membership application form this year, and we’ve been keeping an eye on the new equality monitoring section (we’ll post more about this in future). So far, the results are encouraging. It did however generate some interesting conversations about terminology that we’d never had to have before, and we published a blog post to discuss the rationale for the choices we made here. Getting information from new members is one thing, but getting thousands of existing members to provide information is a bigger challenge - but it’s a challenge that technology will help us resolve in the near future. We’ll have more on this soon!
3. Ensure equality officer roles and equality reps continue to cover specific equality strands.
   At Accord we don’t have any formal equality structures in place except for the overall Equality, Diversity & Inclusion officer and the PEC’s Equality lead. The new Accord Equality Group will be looking at what members feel we need to do in this space — however we’re really conscious that there’s little point in simply replicating the structure of our members’ employers, so whatever is put forward will need to have a unique purpose — and that could simply be to connect members with a common interest but working in different parts of our membership.
4. Consider adopting the TUC model equality clause.
   Accord adopted the model rules some time ago, and the rule book that was adopted at our 2018 conference goes above and beyond. We’ve overhauled the union’s grievance and disciplinary procedures and we have zero tolerance for discrimination and harassment of any kind.
5. Consider formal or informal equality networks.
   At present, Accord has no formal or informal equality networks. As mentioned in previous points, we’re already consulting reps on what our overall lay structure should look like — the proposed changes allow us to be more flexible with our structures and offers the chance to engage with members and reps in a different way to what you might be used to. The developing equality group will look at what networks we may need and how these could be used to further our overall objectives.

Interested in equality matters? Why not join up to the Accord Equality Group.

Need more information or support, contact us at equality@accordhq.org