Employee Relations: TUC's Role in Equality and Diversity Initiatives

This report provides an in-depth analysis of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) and its initiatives to support equality and diversity in employee relations. It explores the impact of TUC's actions, including the role of equality representatives, the promotion of equal rights, and the management of diversity within the union. The report examines the impact of TUC's equality representative initiatives on various aspects of equality, such as gender, age, and disability, and highlights the positive effects of these initiatives. It also discusses the role of disability champions and other national-level trade union initiatives in combating discrimination and promoting a more inclusive workplace. Furthermore, the report references various academic journals and books to support its findings, providing a comprehensive overview of the topic and its implications for creating a fair and equitable working environment. The report concludes that the TUC is actively working to eliminate discrimination and provide equal rights to workers through various strategies and policies.

Employee relations_Assessment 2

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Assessment 2....................................................................................................................................1
Impact of TUC and other trade union initiatives to support equality and diversity...............1
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Trades Union Congress which is abbreviated as TUC is a national organization of trade unions
present in Britain. The unions that are its part act autonomously and conduct negotiations on an
independent basis. The current assessment deals with Impact of TUC and other trade union
initiatives to support equality and diversity.
Assessment 2
Impact of TUC and other trade union initiatives to support equality and diversity
Trades Union Congress (TUC) is a national trade union center and a federation of trade
unions in UK which represents the majority of the trade unions. It helps in managing equality
and diversity among the union members for creating a successful working environments in the
organizations (Fitzenberger, Kohn and Lembcke, 2013). In UK, companies are required to
adhere the practices for eliminating discrimination from the working environment so that
workers can be treated equally. TUC take care of all the factors so that trade unions can be
treated equally by the organizations. For acknowledging the potential for the union to affect the
equality practices positively, TUC shows interest in the implementation and delivery of the
equality legislation in the various areas such as flexible working hours, age, sexual orientation,
religion, belief and disability. There are other essential steps taken by the firm for the further
development of union capacity to promote greater equality and honesty art the working
environment (Cappelli and Keller, 2013).
Previous government of UK supported financially certain union initiatives which was
TUC's equality representative initiative. In this, a new union activist is elected from the current
existing workers in unionised workplaces for the role of promoting equality and fairness at the
work by encouraging staff members to develop proper and effective policies and practices
regarding the equality (Kelly, 2012).
Role of Union representative: equality
The major role played by the union representative are as follows.
 Promotion of equal rights for the employees by improving the equality policies and
practices at the workplace.
 To develop a supportive and friendly environment at the work and in the union so that
they can be valued by the company and peers.
 Working as a role model in treating every employee fairly.
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 Solving the issues regarding the discrimination and harassment (Hall and et.al., 2013).
Equality representative:
Some unions have trained their workers for workplace equality representatives. These
representatives helps in increasing the awareness regarding the equality and its issues among the
employees so that they can solve the problems regarding any kind of discrimination and
harassment within the companies (Nielsen and et.al., 2012). TUC lacks in providing some
statutory rights to the employees which are given by the other specialist representatives such as
union learning representatives and health and safety representatives (Aspinwall and Greenwood,
2013).
Impact of TUC's equality representatives:
There is positive impact of the equality representative initiative of the TUC on the
employer equality practices regrading to the gender, age, religion, belief and many more. From a
survey it is identified that, there is positive impact of three-fifth equality representative initiative
on the disability practices whereas half has on age, gender and race practices and remaining
effected in positive manner on the religion, belief and sexual orientation. On the other hand, 45
from the 100 respondents stated that they do not feel any kind of positive or negative impact in
the field of gender practices (Kelly, 2013).
As per the collective voice response model, equality bargaining results to bring the
positive effect on the union regarding the equality policies and practices. These practices
regarding the monitoring and reviews of the procedures to prevent employees against any kind of
discrimination are more prevalent in unionised companies rather than any other firms. With the
help of various facilities, TUC can help workers in providing them all the equal rights with
honesty and fairness (Bispinck and Schulten, 2011). All these factors result to increase the
handling of grievances, reducing the issues of differentiation, improving the quality of equality
practices, redeveloping of the equality policies as per the problems and issues occurring within
the firm (Waddington, 2013).
Diversity:
The TUC consists of diversity with respect to the background, nationality, culture,
language, beliefs, perceptions, etc. Different opinions and views sometime results to cause
conflict among the workers of the union. For this, it is important to manage these diversities
properly to prevent conflicts or disputes. For this, dispute handling committee is formed by the
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unions whose role is to listen problem and issue of each person and found solution accordingly.
These committee members used to be skilled, talented and experienced. If disputed among the
unions are not resolved than other organisations take benefits of this situation which is not good
for the workers. Some trade unions are changing their structure for developing equality and
managing diversities. It helps in minimising the disputes among the union members.
Potential influence on the equality representatives:
In this, main goal of the representatives is to determine various factors which are
associated with the ability of equality representatives to influence workers for equality practices.
For achieving this goal, TUC uses Activity Support characteristics framework. This framework
helps TUC in evaluating the potential correlates of the effectiveness for equality representatives
(Niforou, 2012). For accomplishing the aim, representatives form equality activity for enhancing
the voice and facilitation for removing discrimination from the workplaces. This process make
workers to feel safe and secure within the company and also make them feel satisfied. All these
factors results to create a friendly and open environment full of morale, values and ethics in the
firm (Stockhammer, 2015).
Disability Champions @ Work:
It is a trade union representative which have interest in issues regarding the disability. It
has wide, huge and diverse sectors to work with an aim to see equality for the disabled
employees in the work place. The role played by this trade union includes increasing awareness
about the disability problems, conducting audits of documents, policies and many other things,
liaising with external organisations and negotiating reasonable adjustments. It redevelops the
policies and practices of the organisations to remove discrimination from the working
environment due to disabilities (Clough, 2012).
Other National Level Trade Union initiatives:
The four ways of initiative in which trade unions tries to remove the discriminations from
the work place are: working with the NGOs against discrimination, training to the unions for
promoting equality, union practices for removing differentiation and social dialogues and
workplace practices. As per a survey, it is found that 36% initiative taken by the national level
trade unions is in the field of training and development then 24% is in the area of changes to the
structure, 22% is on social dialogues and remaining are for joint work with the NGOs (Frey,
Homberg and Osterloh, 2013).
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There are 130 initiatives taken by the trade unions and their results are in the below
figure. This shows that, these initiatives help in solving the issues regarding the race and ethnic
origin with the sexual orientation and disabilities. It shows that trade unions are doing well for
improving the working environment of the organisations. These also help in removing the
various diversities by providing equal opportunities to each and every staff member (Harrod and
O'Brien, 2012).
According to a research, contribution of the national level trade union is more than the
EU level trade union in handling the issues of equality. Trade unions have added some equality
and diversity policies for improving the culture of the organisation. These policies are related to
the statement of commitment, duties of the managers and supervisors, monitoring and review
and then development of the action plan. This process of the policy formation results in
preventing workers from any kind of discrimination. The role of trade union representatives is
very crucial in the policy formation as they properly analyse the complaints related to the
diversity and equality in the organisation (Azzone and Palermo, 2011).
CONCLUSION
From the above report it can be concluded that trade union congress is taking initiatives for
removing discriminations related to the age, gender, ethics, etc from the working environment.
These national level trade unions are working for providing equal rights to the workers.
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Illustration 1: Initiative by discrimination Strand
Source (Trade union practices on anti-discrimination and diversity. 2010)

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REFERENCES
Journals and Books
Aspinwall, M. and Greenwood, J., 2013. Collective action in the European Union: interests and
the new politics of associability. Routledge.
Azzone, G. and Palermo, T., 2011. Adopting performance appraisal and reward systems: A
qualitative analysis of public sector organisational change. Journal of Organizational
Change Management. 24(1). pp.90-111.
Bispinck, R. and Schulten, T., 2011. Trade union responses to precarious employment in
Germany (No. 178). WSI-Diskussionspapier.
Cappelli, P.H. and Keller, J.R., 2013. A study of the extent and potential causes of alternative
employment arrangements. Industrial & Labor Relations Review. 66(4). pp.874-901.
Clough, B., 2012. The role and impact of unions on learning and skills policy and practice: a
review of the research. Unionlearn.
Eichhorst, W., 2015. The unexpected appearance of a new German model. British Journal of
Industrial Relations. 53(1). pp.49-69.
Fitzenberger, B., Kohn, K. and Lembcke, A.C., 2013. Union density and varieties of coverage:
the anatomy of union wage effects in Germany. Industrial & Labor Relations Review.
66(1). pp.169-197.
Frey, B.S., Homberg, F. and Osterloh, M., 2013. Organizational control systems and pay-for-
performance in the public service. Organization Studies. 34(7). pp.949-972.
Hall, S., Critcher, C., Jefferson, T. and Roberts, B., 2013. Policing the crisis: Mugging, the state
and law and order. Palgrave Macmillan.
Harrod, J. and O'Brien, R. eds., 2012. Global unions?: theory and strategies of organized labour
in the global political economy. Routledge.
Hassel, A., 2014. The paradox of liberalization—Understanding dualism and the recovery of the
German political economy. British Journal of Industrial Relations. 52(1). pp.57-81.
Kelly, J., 2012. Rethinking industrial relations: Mobilisation, collectivism and long waves.
Routledge.
Kelly, J., 2012. Rethinking industrial relations: Mobilisation, collectivism and long waves.
Routledge.
Kelly, L., 2013. Surviving sexual violence. John Wiley & Sons.
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Nielsen, M.Ø. and et.al., 2012. Alterations of the brain reward system in antipsychotic naive
schizophrenia patients. Biological psychiatry. 71(10). pp.898-905.
Niforou, C., 2012. International framework agreements and industrial relations governance:
Global rhetoric versus local realities. British Journal of Industrial Relations. 50(2). pp.352-
373.
Stockhammer, E., 2015. Financialization, New Investment Funds and Labour: An International
Comparison, edited by Howard Gospel, Andrew Pendleton and Sigurt Vitols. Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 2014, 416pp., ISBN: 978‐0‐19‐965358‐4,£ 55.00, hardback.
British Journal of Industrial Relations. 53(3). pp.635-637.
Waddington, J., 2013. The Politics of Bargaining: Merger Process and British Trade Union
Structural Development, 1892-1987. Routledge.
Online
Trade union practices on anti-discrimination and diversity. 2010. [PDF]. Available Through :
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