What joining Prospect has given me

Penny Gilg recently joined Prospect after her employer proposed significant changes in the workplace as a response to the coronavirus pandemic. Here, in this personal essay, she writes about her initial misconceptions of unions, and how Prospect membership has now given her peace of mind and a new sense of community.

Penny working from home and dressed formally for an important meeting!

Turns out the thing I hated most about working in an office represents the thing I miss the most.

I used to hate arriving at work – I’d always have to queue to go through the front door. I got the bus so I arrived at the same time as 30 other people and it was a revolving door – not a very efficient system!

It always reminded me of the scene in Harry Potter where all the witches and wizards glumly turn up to work at the Ministry of Magic, as they wait in turn to flush themselves down the toilet looking totally uninterested in their day ahead.

The feeling of being just one of a 1000 people that were going to be shut away in the office all day always left me thinking there could be more. The feeling would pass by the time I got to my desk and sat down to a job I love.

I’ve been working from home for seven weeks now, and I don’t miss the queue for the door, but I do miss the feeling of being part of a bigger team – I’m very aware I’m not surrounded by hundreds of colleagues, a laptop in the bedroom can feel quite lonely at times!

Before I get to that, though, you are probably wondering what this has to do with trade unions. If you aren’t in one I suspect you fall in to one of two camps:

1. Having little understanding of what they do but knowing they have been in the media a bit in recent years for strikes to do with train guards or something;
2. Or a knowledge / memory of the many and varied strikes around the time of Thatcher.

Given that I wasn’t alive for the so-called ‘over-striking’ of the 80s, and there is no visible union activity at my employer, I fall firmly in the first category. I didn’t really think much about unions, but I guess if pushed my understanding of a union member’s attitude went something like this:

“You can’t touch me, I’m in the union – if you try to change the slightest bit of my working practices, we’ll all strike!”

For that reason, I thought being in a union was something other people did. Personally, I don’t want to stand in the way of progress, I have nothing against sound business decisions and can see why changes to our work, hours/pay cut and redundancies may be necessary – if all these are conducted in a fair manner.

But my ideas were all based on heavily unionised environments, so when someone suggested I join a union even though we didn’t know of anyone else at work in one I was hesitant – I didn’t see much benefit.

I thought, if there are only a few of us, a union can’t negotiate with my employer on my behalf (you need a significant number of members at your work place before this happens). But I wondered if membership could give me peace of mind – by having someone independent to answer my questions about what may or may not happen in these strange times, and in terms of the economy only going to get worse.

Community

I also wondered if a union could help me rediscover a sense of community that I have lost from working at home. Normally I would feel the presence of all the other staff in the office, and though I didn’t know them all, it felt like we were in it together.

Now, I don’t have that sense of community, but I have increasing communications from very senior management – comms about changing priorities, adapting work practices and updates on the impacts of the pandemic.

I wondered if being in a union could give me a way to feel connected to my colleagues again – a bit like in the office, I wouldn’t need to know all the other members and I may never talk to them, but it would be nice to know they are there, should I need them.

Based on this, I joined Prospect a few weeks ago and I already value an independent view of all the changes that have started to happen.

It turns out there were quite a few of my colleagues who were already members, so I’ve already started to feel that sense of community I was losing. I’m hopeful that enough of my colleagues will join so that our employer can’t ignore Prospect but will engage in constructive conversations allowing me to ask questions and understand business decisions in a way I currently can’t.

And I’m not the only one – new union membership in my workplace has spiked in recent weeks. What shocks me is that two months ago I didn’t know any of this was an option. I only had my misconceptions about what unions do, based on the small amount of their activity that makes it to mainstream media or the history books.

What I would like to do is spread the word to other engineering professionals that joining Prospect or another union is an option. I don’t necessarily think everyone will want to join but, everyone at least has the right to know they can.

A few more notes:

Different unions offer varying benefits and what’s important to you may be different to me, but these are a few key facts that swung it for me:

• Prospect isn’t affiliated to a political party;
• Prospect can provide free legal advice to its members;
• Even with only a few members from one employer, Prospect will set up a branch specific to you and colleagues with a full time officer giving you a single point of contact; and
• The officer can accompany you to important HR meetings if you’d like.
• Should it come to it, Prospect will cover your legal fees (for example in an unfair dismissal case). There are a few other benefits too, but these were the key ones for me.
• Prospect helped design the furlough scheme with the government. They are now feeding back concerns from employers and employees to improve it.
• Your employer will only ever know you are in a union if you tell them;
• But if they know and treat you unfairly as a result, they can face legal action.
• 1 in 4 female employees and 1 in 5 male employees are in a union;
• For those in ‘Professional’ vocations, over 50% of female employees are a member of a trade union.