DTI Consultation Paper Says Safety Reps
Save Society Up To £578 Million Annually

A consultation paper released in January 2007 by the Department of Trade and Industry contains significant findings for UK industries and union safety representatives alike.  The paper, entitled "Workplace representatives: a review of their facilities and facility time", contains the results of the Workplace Employment Relations Survey 2004, which shows that safety representatives prevent between 8,000 and 13,000 injuries annually, and prevent between 3,000 and 8,000 work-related illnesses annually. 

As reported in the January/March edition of Hazards magazine, the consequent savings to industry and society as a whole, in terms of reduced time off for injuries and illness, amounts to at least £181million, and as much as £578million a year, at 2004 prices.

Below is a major portion of the text of Annex B, from the paper.  The whole of the Consultation paper, in Adobe PDF format,  is available here:
Workplace representatives: a review of their facilities and facility time - January 2007 (405kb) PDF


Department of Trade and Industry Consultation Document - January 1007
Workplace representatives: a review of their facilities and facility time
ANNEX B
Benefits and Costs of Workplace Representatives

Introduction
The costs and benefits of workplace representatives are explored in this paper. As well as using data from the Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS 2004), the discussion will also draw upon findings from other useful surveys and the wider empirical literature.

The 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS 2004) provides a representative account of employment relations in Great Britain, covering around 700,000 workplaces and 22.5 million employees. As well as being a rich data source on the characteristics and activities of union representatives, WERS 2004 also looks at non-union representation, which has become more prevalent in recent years. The survey collected a wide variety of information, including what issues representatives spent their time on; how much time they spent conducting their duties; whether or not they were paid for their time and whether they were provided with access to facilities.

This paper is arranged as follows. The first section is an empirical 'snapshot' of employee representation as documented by the WERS 2004 survey, and other sources where appropriate. The benefits of employee representatives are discussed in the second part of the paper. Third, the WERS data is explored further to inform an estimate of the financial costs of employee representatives to the economy. Part 4 contains a summary of the paper.

1. Population and coverage of employee representatives
Population estimates of the number of on-site lay representatives in workplaces with 5+ employees (based on WERS 2004 Survey of Employee Managers) are described in Table 1. The mid-point estimate constitutes around 1 per cent of people in employment in 2004.

The estimates described in Table 1 exclude representatives concerned exclusively with health and safety. Representatives concerned with health and safety and training and learning are discussed below.

According to WERS 2004, 46 per cent of workplaces12  were covered by a form of representative voice.13 This equates to just over two thirds of all employees in these workplaces.

Coverage varies by sector. Table 3 below shows that nearly all public sector employees (around 5.3 million) are covered by some kind of representative voice. The proportion of covered employees in the private sector is smaller, but this still constitutes around twice as many covered employees than in the public sector.  Coverage is defined as representation either by a union, on-site representatives or by 'distance reps'; e.g. in workplaces with recognised unions but without on-site reps, there is a lay representative of the same union at a sister plant who also covers their employees.

The incidence of on-site representation is described below, with estimates of the proportion of workplaces with union and non-union on-site representation. Numbers in parentheses show the estimated number of workplaces.


Representatives concerned with training and learning
It is not possible to use WERS to meaningfully estimate the number of Union Learning Representatives.14 The Department for Education and Skills (DfES) collect data on the number of ULRs. The latest estimates from DfES are around 15,000 ULRs have been trained since the establishment of the Union Learning Fund in 1998.  According to the WERS survey, managers in around 14,000 workplaces reported the presence of at least some on-site union representative that had specific responsibility for promoting training or learning. However, it is important to note that some of these will not necessarily be designated ULRs as the term refers to a specific role as outlined in legislation, and it is possible for union reps to promote training and learning without being an officially designated ULR.

In terms of coverage, 2.4 million employees (11 per cent of the total) were employed in a workplace where the manager reported the presence of at least some on-site union representative who has training and learning responsibilities. It is important to note that not all of these employees will have access to a learning rep, as they may not belong to the union in question. DfES estimate that around 250,000 people who have benefited from the activities of ULR since 1998.

Representatives concerned with health and safety
It is not possible to use WERS 2004 to reliably estimate the population of representatives who are exclusively concerned with health and safety.15 There are no formal arrangements for training or registration with the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). However, the TUC keep records of safety representatives and estimate that there are around 150,000 trade union appointed safety representatives currently active, with a further 30,000 representatives of employee safety (RoES)16 .

There is likely to be considerable overlap between these representatives and those estimated in Table 1, above. The number of reps estimated by the TUC could include multi-issue representatives concerned with health and safety as well as other matters, therefore already accounted for in the estimates. We can use WERS to estimate the proportion of workplaces and employees that have a dedicated health and safety representation (either a committee or a free standing representative). It shows that around 27 per cent of workplaces with 5+ employees had some form of dedicated health and safety representation, covering 65 per cent of employees.

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12 A workplace is defined as comprising 'activities of a single employer at a single set of premises', e.g. a branch or a high street bank. The term 'workplace' and 'organisation are therefore not interchangeable.
13 Coverage is defined by the 'best general 2004 measure' e.g. the presence of at least one of the following: a recognised union, a joint consultative committee (whether at workplace or at a higher level), a lay union representative or a stand alone non-union representative.
14 Managers report the presence of a union rep that has responsibility for training and learning, but this does not have to be an officially designated ULR and union reps may play a role without being appointed or trained as a ULR. The TUC and DfES estimates are more reliable.
15 Health and safety reps may either sit on a dedicated health and safety committee or hold a free-standing role concerned solely with health and safety issues. The WERS Management Cross Section Survey only asks about the presence of free-standing reps in the absence of a committee structure. Furthermore, WERS does not ask how many health and safety reps are present (either on the committee or in free-standing roles).
16 A RoES is an employee that is elected by the workforce to represent them in consultations on health and safety issues where there are no trade union appointed health and safety representatives, or the workplace is non-unionised.


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