Public and Commercial Services Union

This is a case study about PCS members campaigning and organising for agency workers rights and recognition at British Cattle Movement Service (BCMS) in Workington.

This campaign illustrates many of the points made in this guidance.

Background of the campaign

The government set up the British Cattle Movement Service (BCMS) in 1998 to establish monitoring services in the wake of the BSE outbreak.

The scope of the service increased over time to include work resulting from other outbreaks of diseases such as foot and mouth.

Half the workforce at the British Cattle Movement Service in Workington (roughly 350 staff) is agency staff employed by Adecco recruitment agency.

Three quarters of these staff have been employed at BCMS for more than two years, and a number of these for over five years.

Recently a further 330 new agency staff have been employed to administrate permanent work – the single payment to farmers, an annual subsidy, and there are plans to employ a further 170 agency staff.

The service will be employing around 850 agency staff and only 350 permanent staff.

Agency staff all receive minimum wage, whilst the department pays Adecco £10.23 an hour for each individual worker.

A large proportion of these new staff are aged between 16–18.

Despite the department claiming that the new staff are to be employed on a temporary basis until September accommodation costing £3 million has been built to house them.

Aims of campaign

• In 2005 the local Branch began a campaign at Workington to:
• Organise and gain recognition with agency workers
• Campaign for permanent posts
• Help agency workers win terms and conditions equivalent to those of their permanent colleagues
• Include agency workers in the membership and activity of the local union branch.

Campaign strategy

A recruitment campaign at Workington was set up and this included devising specialised recruitment literature, running desk topping recruitment and holding site meetings.

The initial success of this campaign meant that around 90% of agency staff joined the union and some activists were elected.

Members’ meetings were then held and local campaign literature was produced including leaflets, stickers and posters.

Civil servants who were union members working locally were involved in the campaign and became convinced of the need to support their agency colleagues in the campaign for equal rights and both campaigned together.

PCS initiated a campaign of writing letters to MPs, the PCS parliamentary group received regular updates, and local press releases ensured excellent local press coverage of the issue.

A campaign to involve the local community was launched bringing together the support of local trade unions and other community groups.This culminated in a public rally with guest speakers including the local MP.

Alongside the campaign for comparable rights for agency staff, an exercise was held to improve the skills of the workforce.

This led to 35 level 1 and 2 level literacy accreditations which helped the agency workers in applying for the permanent posts.

Outcome

As a direct result of the campaign, 100 new permanent jobs were established in the BCMS and 37 of these eventually were awarded to agency workers. The literacy accreditations that the temporary staff gained through union extra skills training helped staff in their applications for the new posts.

In early September 2006, Adecco staff voted overwhelm ingly for trade union recognition in an independent ballot.

Adecco’s initial refusal to voluntarily recognise the union meant that PCS agency worker members were forced to use the legal route to force recognition through the Central Arbitration Committee the first time that a trade union in the UK has taken this process to this stage with an employment agency.

In a 64% turnout, 100% of all voters voted for union recognition. A recognition agreement has been drawn up and we are now working on winning real improvements to Adecco members pay and conditions.

More information is available from the PCS organising and learning department.