By | 3 min
Unions 21 Director Dan Whittle addressed a fringe meeting at TUC Congress 2010 launching new survey research from YouGov, download here.
"I want to briefly take you succinctly through the publication: The Future for union – What do Workers Think, that you have in front of you.
I think that whatever stream of union work you’re involved in there is something here for you amongst the results. They give an incite into how people see their work, the problems they think are important, the ways in which they think unions should be involved.
Working with YouGov we surveyed over 2000 working people earlier this year, asking them a range of questions.
The graph on the first page shows how people feel about going to work. 4 in 10 people when they got up this morning, looked forward to it, 3 in 10 wished they didn’t have to go. It Shows we have a way to go before the workplace is somewhere the majority of people would prefer to be.
The table on page 3 shows attitudes to work. Two thirds of people say their job is interesting and enjoyable.
Though 4 in 10 say they never have time to get their job done.
And only just over half of those surveyed said they worked somewhere people were encouraged to develop their skills.
So, a positive attitude to work - though just under half of people are asked to complete their work in a time scale that’s perhaps not realistic, and still nearly half of people not being encouraged to develop.
When we look at the workplace problems people care about, perhaps surprisingly preferential treatment by management or senior staff is the most commonly cited.
With unfair wages, which we’ve made the subject of our Wednesday Fringe Meeting, coming in a significant second.
Over the page on the table on Page 4, we see that working people feel they have little influence over the pay increases or bonuses they receive but much more on the pace of work, and how they do their job.
On Page 5 we see that when workers were asked to rate their managers they gave them the best marks for understanding the organisation’s business and worst marks for allocating pay and bonuses fairly.
So where do working people want unions to step in?
In the bottom right of page 5 we can see that unions are rated most highly for protecting workers against unfair treatment and for knowledge and understanding of the employer's business.
But when it comes to making work more enjoyable for those 33% of people who didn’t want to go to work this morning, both unions and management are seen as doing little to improve that aspect.
So those are the results, with analysis kept to a minimum, so that the panel can have a free run at picking out the interesting, the counter intuitive, the revealing results, and interpreting their meaning and the lessons there are for unions."
