1. Performance management – the challenge for union reps

Many trade unionists in both the public and the private sector share the view of leading academic Professor Phil Taylor of the University of Strathclyde that performance management (“PM”) is “the number one issue on the frontline of workplaces today”. However, from a trade union perspective, one of the biggest challenges is how to collectivise an issue which appears, at first glance, to be highly personal, with its focus on individual performance and pay, and the threat of punitive “capability” proceedings.

Taylor made a major contribution with his 2013 report for the Scottish Trade Union Congress – Performance management and the new workplace tyranny, drawing on the front-line experiences of reps in the finance and telecoms sector from the Unite general union and from the CWU Communications Workers’ Union. The report demonstrates how punitive PM has become a systemic, organisational problem which is linked to widespread mental ill-health and distress. Senior negotiators in the finance sector have told LRD that if anything, conditions at work have worsened in the three years since Taylor’s report was published. But as far as union action is concerned, there have been some notable push backs against this trend, with important victories in unionised workplaces. One aim of this booklet is to circulate information and learning about these successful union campaigns, to spread knowledge of what works.