Integrative bargaining

The national learning agreement signalled the intention of the employer and the national union to work jointly to provide learning for staff. This section outlines the integrative bargaining behaviours between ULRs and management and the key difficulties associated with pursuing an integrative bargaining strategy at the local level. The key shared problem articulated between PCS and HMRC on the learning theme was how to support a greater number and wider range of employees to participate in learning and skills activity.

The need to improve learning participation was driven in part by external political factors and also by internal barriers to learning. External drivers included the learning and skills policies of the New Labour government. HMRC’s commitment to the Skills Pledge (to offer learning opportunities for those without Level 2 qualifications), the development of the Skills for Government sector skills

council action plan, Professional Skills for Government, and the subsequent focus on apprenticeships under the coalition government. These policies generated a raft of national initiatives that senior management at HMRC signed up to. This established new commitments and priorities for local management to increase workforce learning, particularly amongst lower skilled staff.

Internally, there were also drivers that place an increased focus on employee learning. The adoption of lean processes also generated an expectation that staff would participate in quality improvement teams. The Pacesetter programme introduced ‘lean academy training’ as a tool to promote awareness of these new processes and encourage participation in lean working groups. Yet there were recognised constraints on staff participation in lean and other HR processes. Internal HMRC reports noted the poor implementation of Pacesetter and low employee engagement (Radnor & Bucci, 2007). Furthermore, union surveys highlighted staff dissatisfaction with the PDE process noting that some frontline managers used it punitively to sanction staff rather than using a more positive, developmental approach as described in HMRC guidance. The union also identified that new on-line learning practices limited the scope for some low skilled workers to engage in company training. These internal and external factors placed an imperative on management to consider how they would encourage more staff to take part in workplace learning activity and helped to establish a ‘shared problem’.

The second step in the integrative bargaining process is the search for a solution to address recognised problems. At ProcessingHouse, ULRs and the union learning center were presented as a solution to help address these challenges in employee learning. The branch reps used the national learning agreement as the starting point in negotiations to highlight the agreement made to introduce the new branch learning coordinator role and anticipation that ULRsl would support staff in the PDE. Both of these were explicitly referred to in the national learning agreement (op cit p 5). The agreement stated that ULRs would help staff in several other ways: to identify their own development needs; to see development needs as learning opportunities; to identify appropriate courses; and to help staff

present a case to management for the resources needed to address their learning needs. This presented ULRs in an advisory and advocacy role framed in terms of the obligations on individuals to advance their own learning needs through using these new union resources. In addition to presenting the ULRs as part of the learning solution, the union at ProcessingHouse also developed supporting workplace institutions. The branch accessed additional resources for learning, via union-only funding routes. Using Walton and McKersie’s construct, this extended the frontier of shared utility through bringing resources to the workplace that would otherwise not be available. The branch secured funding from other sources including funding for LAWD events and resources to pay for the secondment of the BLC to work full-time on setting up the union learning center.

ULRs frequently referred to ‘making the business case’ for learning in which potential mutual gains were foregrounded. Union learning was presented to local managers as offering an opportunity to enhance productivity through improved motivation, functional flexibility and HR processes. Emphasis was placed on increasing learning activity and improving staff awareness and participation in the departmental PDE system and Pacesetter lean training programmes. As one ULR noted, “we said (to ProcessingHouse managers) ‘well you are giving people an opportunity which will motivate them to do better in their job’” (PCS ULR 3). These were generic claims presented to senior managers to make the case for union learning. As the ULRs became more active in engaging frontline managers, notably to secure release to attend courses in the learning center, the ULRs also used their specific knowledge of the business unit, work section or in some cases individual managers and workers, to frame the case for support. For example, it was suggested to some managers that enabling learners to use the union learning center would avoid unnecessary travelling time for staff to the new HMRC, off-site learning center. In other cases, ULRs suggested that union learning opportunities for staff at risk of disciplinary would help prevent the escalation of disciplinary proceedings, saving time and potential conflict. In these specific contexts, learning was presented to management as offering improved efficiency and minimising potential disruption to workflow.

Yet, underpinning all of the union and ULRs’ arguments was the fundamental case for equity and fairness, particularly in opening up access to learning resources for workers on lower grades. The ULRs continually stressed the point that the purpose and value of union learning was the offer of learning for all staff and opening up opportunities for lower paid workers. This argument invoked a broader language of equality of opportunities which resonated with management in meeting wider (less well defined) equality goals. This emphasis on equality and opportunity was also stressed by ULRs to employees as the key organising principle underpinning union learning. The ULRs did promote the benefits of union learning in terms of skills and qualifications to aid future employability, but the underlying messages for staff were around extending equality of access to workplace learning. This changed the discourse around learning from an individual to a collective issue.

The next step in the integrative bargaining process was the evaluation of the proposed solution. Although the national learning agreement and the dialogue developed by ULRs with management stated a range of potential benefits, the workplace actors found it difficult to be precise about the actual gains that would accrue from union learning at the local level. There was limited data available to both parties with which to help evaluate potential gains, as one ULR commented:

“At first it was very hard to negotiate because they wanted to know what the benefits would be. We did not know, we said ‘well you are giving people an opportunity which will motivate people’.” (PCS ULR 3)

The data that were presented focused on ‘learning problems’, not the calculation of future benefits. The ULRs referenced external reports and policy documents that identified learning and skills needs at the national, public sector or departmental levels; a report commissioned by DWP on union learning suggested that 10 per cent of staff had poor basic skills. Data from TUC-commissioned research and evaluations of the ULF provided general messages about the use and value of union learning. Yet there was little data available at the workplace level with which parties could evaluate the potential value of the learning center and LAWD activities. In this uncertain context, the text of the learning

agreement itself helped to articulate how the employer and union might work jointly at the local level to address learning needs.