Only 49 per cent of the workforce look forward to going to work on an average day in the UK, according to the first report from the British Workplace Representation and Participation Survey – the most extensive poll of workers and their attitudes to their job, trade unions and their employer conducted for many years in the UK.
This compares to 66 per cent of the US workforce in a comparable study by Richard Freeman, one of the report’s authors.
What workers want from workplace organisations – a report to the TUC’s Promoting Trade Unionism Task Group, whose report Reaching the missing millions was presented to the TUC Congress this morning, also finds that:
- One in ten of the workforce (9 per cent) say they work very hard on jobs they do not enjoy and to which they do not look forward.
- Non-union members are not anti-union. Almost two in three (62 per cent) of non-union members agree that ‘strong trade unions are needed to protect working conditions and wages’. Only one in five (20 per cent) think ‘unions have no future in modern Britain’.
- Almost half the workforce are now paid in some way that relates to their employer’s performance.
- Preferential treatment by management is the biggest complaint at work, very closely followed by unfair wages.
- Union and non-union members prefere co-operative to adversarial relations between unions and employers.
- Union and non-union members back work councils, now due in the UK following the European Information and Consultation Directive.
The survey is used in the Promoting the Missing Millions report to show that 5 million non-union members in non-union workplaces want to be represented by trade unions.
