Pictured above: Green reps Katie Dickson and Gareth Page. Portrait by Steve Forrest
This year is UNISON’s Year of Green Activity, during which the union is highlighting the role of its members in pushing for greener and fairer workplaces.
At the heart of this work are the union’s green reps. And one of the key initiatives of the year is to win greater recognition and empowerment for those reps. UNISON is leading a trade union campaign that seeks statutory recognition of these increasingly important activists, along with the guaranteed facility time that would come with it.
There is a strong precedent for this ambition. The Employment Rights Act, passed at the end of last year, provides much-needed recognition to equality reps, with paid time off and facilities that will be available from October this year. This mirrors the existing recognition of both safety and learning reps – and it’s this that the unions now want for green reps. In June they will be lobbying MPs to help them achieve it.
UNISON policy officer Michelle Singleton says: “Meeting the challenges of the climate emergency requires all hands on deck. As with health and safety, learning reps and equality reps, green reps are pivotal in ensuring that workplace transitions to net zero are fair, inclusive and effective.
“Spanning advocacy, oversight, education and collaboration, they are essential agents for a just and successful climate transition.”
A voice and advocate for workers
To back the campaign, the TUC has written a position paper on the issue, which outlines the key role that green reps play in helping employers meet the UK’s ambitious climate targets. It describes green reps as the “central pillar” of the trade union climate movement in seeking workplace sustainability and ‘future-proofing’ livelihoods during times of change.
Despite the urgency of the climate crisis, the TUC says that “the majority of organisations still lack even basic climate adaptation and decarbonisation plans. Even among those with emissions targets or publicly stated goals, credible pathways to achieve them are very often lacking.
“We make the case that achieving a net zero economy for the UK, and ensuring that this process is completed fairly and consensually, can be greatly supported by legally recognising and empowering green reps.”
The paper identifies a green rep’s special responsibility to work with their employer to devise and deliver the policies, operational processes, and strategy that will make the enterprise sustainable. It is their special value to be both a voice and advocate for workers.
But whenever green reps are polled, one topic on their minds is that they are not recognised under the law and have to negotiate any facility time individually with managers, workplace by workplace.
“So much time and effort are wasted by green reps and their employers on defining the role and negotiating its purposes, that it drains the ability of green reps to start creating impact,” the TUC says. “A statement in law that green reps can exist in workplaces, have distinct functions, and can take up rights and roles is an essential first step to meaningful change.”
Finding the time
Katie Dickson and Gareth Page are both green reps for the UNISON’s Hertfordshire Police Staff branch – Katie having become the branch’s first ever green rep in March 2023, and Gareth joining her 18 months ago.
Their experience perhaps epitomises the situation in which most green reps currently find themselves – full of enthusiasm and commitment, making some good inroads with their employer, but compromised by the lack of recognition and, in particular, time.
Katie is a business support assistant based at Stevenage Police Station, working in the prosecution of minor traffic offences. She’s a keen environmentalist in the broadest sense, a member of Friends of the Earth and with an interest in wildlife.
If she needs time for her green rep work, Katie has to submit a form, validated by her line manager; sometimes, she will just use her own time. “But I do think that’s unfair, expecting me to use my own leave,” she says.
“I do as much as I can to have the skills to be a green rep and to be as knowledgeable as I can be, but I feel very limited, because I’m neurodiverse as well. I’m working 37 hours a week, staring at a computer screen, and then to expect me to go home and write up all my notes from everything, it’s just a real push for me.”
Gareth is a vehicle technician in the fleet department, based at police HQ in Welwyn Garden City, one of a team keeping some 500 vehicles on the road. One of his achievements as a rep has been to highlight a compliance issue with the fleet’s handling of waste electrical and electronic equipment, which has now been remedied to impressive effect.
Seeking time, for him, is a little less formal than for Katie. “I ask my line manager if I can do union things on certain days and, as part of my personal development, he will allow me time. But there’s no official time, it’s just me having to justify what I’m doing. He has been quite good.”
But Gareth also uses some of his own time. Plus, he has a family. “Yeah, things can busy at home. If facility time became available, if we did get a certain amount of set time per week to do green activities, that would be much better.”
The campaign
Both Katie and Gareth sit on Hertfordshire Constabulary’s sustainability working group – Katie representing UNISON, and Gareth the fleet. The group is meant to ensure that the force meets its green commitments, but the two reps are concerned that since the chair left the force last September, a group that was already meeting just once every two months, hasn’t reconvened at all.
“It’s important that the work continues with the group, and that we don’t lose all of the action points that we’ve worked towards already,” says Gareth. “I do feel strongly about that. But you know, how much do you push it as an individual or as green reps?”
As Katie puts it: “Because I have limited time, I’m not really taken seriously enough.”
Michelle has a solution: “One answer to this predicament lays in statutory recognition, which would give green reps much more influence and clout – and the right to formally ask for additional data and reports.
“With all public sector employers, having to ensure their services meet ambitious net zero emissions targets by 2050, it will take partnership working and workforce engagement to get us there.”
What UNISON is seeking requires legislation. At the end of June, the union will be asking members to email their MPs and ask for their support of new legal rights for green reps, including:
- Legal recognition in the workplace
- Paid time off and training for their role
- Rights to information and consultation on workplace transition plans
- Joint future-proofing committees to help workers and employers plan together.
In short, the union will argue that “a fair transition to net zero needs workers to have a voice.”
Find out about UNISON’s Year of Green Activity
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