Platform Worker Organising at Deliveroo in the UK: From Wildcat Strikes to Building Power

It has been five years since the first strikes of Deliveroo workers in London in 2016. Since then, workers have continued to organise. The campaigns have involved five different aspects: first, wildcat strike action; second, networks and internationalisation; third, union organising with the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (iwgb); fourth, legal campaigning; and fifth, wider leverage campaigns. What is less understood so far is the different strengths and weaknesses of these aspects, and how they have contributed to the build of workers’ self-organisation and power at Deliveroo. This article explores the different aspects and considers the effectiveness of each. It concludes by considering what can be learned from these struggles for the understanding of platform work and trade union organising today.

Leadership and Followership in the Context of Trade Unionism

Trade union leadership and followership are complimentary and symbiotic. Pragmatic followership serves to engender effective trade union leadership. Union leaders are expected to work with and stand by their members in order to attain union mandates. Union ethos demands that leaders must place the interest and welfare of workers as their most paramount goal and work assiduously towards satisfying them. Union members must consider the antecedents and pedigree of aspirants and ensure that only unionists with track records of tenaciously and selflessly championing the union's cause should be elected as leaders. Through leadership by example, trust, integrity, and candor, union leaders can bring about positive changes to both workers and their union. Finally, the authors called on union leaders to be alive to their responsibilities and demonstrate ethical and servant forms of leadership in order to cope with the challenges of giving vent to the aspirations of their members.

Mapping domestic workers’ organizing globally

Domestic workers face challenges for organizing, e.g. decentralization of the workforce, nature of the employment relationship. This article analyses, based on a multiple country-comparison, how domestic workers organize despite constrictions. We identify three forms of organizing: the trade union model and the association model (Shireen Ally). We propose, though, an additional third model, the ‘hybrid type’: domestic workers organize ‘amongst themselves’ in associations and at the same time these associations are linked to or integrated into trade unions, which provides representation, services and contact with other workers. Related to this finding, we see a trend of an ‘emerging trade unionism’. Which means that we tend to find more trade union-related forms of organizing than a decade ago. One explanatory factor is the “governance struggle” of winning the International Labour Organization’s Convention “Decent Work for Domestic Workers” in 2011, which led to an increased collaboration and trust-building between organized domestic workers and trade unions.

TRADE UNIONS AND BASIC INCOME: SOME DANISH EXPERIENCES

Theoretically, there are many good arguments that unions should support a proposal on basic income. The main reason for the Danish trade unions resistance to basic income reform is that it would go against the short-term interest of the unions in organisational self-maintenance. Trade unions will lose power in relation to their members with a basic income. Trade unions have control over individual members by virtue of the collective agreement system and the labour law system. If you have a basic income system, the individual worker will decide when he or she wants to leave his workplace and strike. Suppose a single worker or a group of workers leave their workplace because of dissatisfaction with the working condition. In that case, they will be punished financially according to the rules of labour law rely on any support from their trade union.

PROTECTION OF THE RIGHTS AND INTERESTS OF THOSE WHO PERFORM PAID WORK IN THE LIGHT OF THE ACT ON TRADE UNIONS. THE AXIOLOGICAL-PHYLOSOPHICAL-PRAXEOLOGICAL ASPECT

The feature of the Polish protection of employees is both the vertical and horizontal binding force. The vertical dimension stems from the rights and duties constituted in domestic legal norms being addressed to all of its addressees. These norms, on the other hand, may take on a horizontal dimension since their specification may be the subject of detailed regulations such as normative collective agreements being a basis for seeking redress, concluded by a trade union and an employer. They may thus be the subject of normative content of collective labour agreements, work regulations and separate collective agreements.

TRADE UNION REPRESENTATION OF EMPLOYEE INTERESTS AT THE WORKPLACE LEVEL

The article discusses trade union representation of employee interests at the workplace level. The author analyzes the structure of the company trade union organization, the facilitations in its functioning and the most important rights, including the right to collective bargaining. The analysis is the basis for assessing the current regulation and formulating conclusions for the future.

Macroeconomic Policy Changes and Its Impact on Trade Unions, an Empirical Study on OECD Countries for the Period 2001-2020

This study examines the macroeconomic variables affecting trade union rate membership in OECD nations from 2001 to 2020. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has 38 of the most industrialized countries globally, which counts more than 80% of the global GDP; analyzing the macroeconomic movements of these countries means that we most likely know the variance of the global macroeconomic changes. We target the effect of employability, expenditure on education, unemployment, inflation, FDI, economic growth, wages, and salaries on trade union participation of employers. To conduct this research, we used data from World Bank, ILO, and OECD for 38 countries during the period 2001-2020, conducting a panel data Fixed Effect non-linear regression model with robust effect considering the non-normality and the possibility of heteroscedasticity of some of the variables. The results show that employers in the industry, the productivity in the service sector, and wages will increase the enrolment in a trade union, but on the other side, an increase of FDI and unemployment rates will decrease the association of employers to be in a trade union.

THE EMPLOYMENT PROTECTION OF MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF A WORKPLACE TRADE UNION AND THOSE ABOVE AFTER THE AMENDMENTS

The aim of the contemplation is the issue of trade union activists’ employment protection. Discussing article 32 of the Trade Unions Act, the author focuses on changes introduced in the Act from 5th July 2018. In the article, the author points out the meaning of an employed person, the date by which the trade union must adapt its approach towards matters such as a notice of termination, dissolution of employment or one party changes to provision of employment of trade union’s activists. In the study, the author discusses the legal position of the board members of a trade union at the workplace level an above mentioned in the Act of 2003 about so-called group redundancies. The author indicates the differences between the legal protection of an employed person and a union activist that is employed on other category of employment.

THE CONCEPT OF A TRADE UNION ORGANIZATION COVERING THE ENTIRE WORK ESTABLISHMENT

The presented study concerns the concept of a “trade union organization covering the entire work establishment”. In this study an attempt was made to answer the question whether the term means that the trade union organization must actually conduct activity in each unit of the work establishment in the objective sense, or it is sufficient when, in accordance with the statute or other union resolution defining the subjective scope of its activities, the trade union activity covers the workplace as a whole. The research is based on a dogmatic and legal analysis of Polish law as well as on case-law and legal writing. As a result of the considerations, the Author comes to the conclusion that the status of a work establishment trade union organization is determined by specifying the subjective scope of its activity in its statute or other union resolution. Fears that such a solution to the problem enables the dictatorship of a minority in the workplace can be neutralized by making union rights conditional on the representativeness of a trade union organization also where there is only one such organization in the workplace