Gw RD, ddim gyn Strange. The 23rd meeting in 2015 of the economy energy and tourism committee. I welcome all members and our witnesses. Reminding everyone please to turn off or at least turn to silent all mobile phones and other electronic devices so that they do not interfere with the sound equipment.чик allegations. One on the agenda today is a continuation of the evidence taking in â'r ymddangos, neu ddechrau'r ysgoledig yma. Ac rwy'n cau'r ysgoledig yma o'r mwynhau. Rwy'n credu'r dros yw Professor Chris Warhurst o'r University of Warwick a dr John McGurk, yw'r head of CIPD at Scotland, ac rwy'n rwy'n credu'n ddechrau'n ddych chi'n ddigwydd. Rwy'n credu'r ymddangos o'r ysgoledig yma o'r mwynhau a chyflwyddiadau yma, go � chorus you have got to cover some of the issues of interest to members, particularly around job quality, fair work, training, trade union involvement and so on. I would ask members to keep their questions short and to the point as possible and if we can have answers short to the point that will be helpful of getting through the topics in the time available. I would give to the member, if they would address their questions metro Perhaps one panel member, if he would like to come in and respond to a point or a question that has been put to the other panel member, just catch my eye and I'll bring you in as best I can as time allows. I wonder if I could just start, maybe address this initially to Professor Warhurst, if I may. I was very interested in reading your submission, talking around issues of job quality, Dwi anodd hwnnw i ni fydd oedd oes iawn o'r rhodd o'r economi aoedd o'r hwyach o rhodd – o'r hollol bydau hollol a oedd o'r hollol yn ei ddwyffir. Dyma'r rhoedd oedd rhaid i chi wneud am hwnnw yn dda'r economu. yn ddigonol i chi i gael기를 frydynt gyd yn cael ei ysgrifennu Romaniol oherwydd y Gwyll Journal i'r janod gyfrifiadau yn yanod.  Mae'n ddigonol i'r ariadau yn y ll Incondasol, showing the high levels of employment and labour intensive industry. However, their competitors were in Eastern Europe and China, and while they strof to be a living wage employer—their employer enjoyed it—they were very clear that whether they might like to pay their staff more would mean that it would be very difficult to compete yr ysgol cymryd o'r ddwygion yr ysgolion hefyd. Mae'n llyfr iawn na'r ddweud yng Nghymru forgwyaeth ni'n amlwgol, oherwydd am y twym ni'n iawn, ac mae'n amlwgol iawn a'r awdol y ddefnydd. A'r ddweud o'r gweithio'n ddwylliant hwnnw, oherwydd mae'n tuch goldid ymmell gan i'w ni hynny. Rwyf yn ymmellaf, Mae nhw'n nhw'n nhw'n nhw'n nhw'n nhw'n nhw'n nhw'n nhw. No, I'll be flexible for your first answer. There are a number of different models which different academics have put forward to try and explain, for example, why the UK's performance is relatively weak against other countries, usually Germany. In the 1980s, towards the end of the 1980s, a fairly prominent American academic called David Fangold started suggesting that there were what we might call high-skill equilibrium and low-skill equilibrium. In other words, economies which more or less settle around having high skills and economies which more or less settle around having low skills. Within those economies, within those equilibria, there were knock-on implications for the workplace. In other words, the type of economy that you have influences the type of management, the organisational governance structures that you have, the types of work organisation that you have and the types of skill you have. So, for example, if you want to compete on low cost, it's likely that your workplaces will be tightly managed and have low-skill, routinised, low-paid work. So you can see the kind of chain which goes through here, and the kind of interesting question then becomes, can you break that chain? Or are you forever going to be locked into that? And it's clear that if you take that kind of model, the kind of what's in the high-skill equilibrium model, in terms of the workplaces called the high road, it's quite clear that there is a propensity in the UK to opt for the low road. And there have been pressures in other countries, for example in Germany, which have been held up as a kind of high-road, high-skills equilibrium model to move towards that. And in Germany, they have made quite, in certain lander, they've made quite specific decisions that they will not compete with China. There have been pressures to do that. So, for example, in North Rhine-Westphalia, which is one of the states within Germany, there was a lot of pressure from their manufacturing companies to lower their costs to start competing with China. And the strapline was, you can't beat Beijing on price. And what they offered to do as a local government was to fund initiatives with the social partners to go to those companies which are feeling under pressure and say to them, what can we do to help? And in some cases, it was about rethinking their products. In other words, could they position their products in different markets? Could they keep them in those kind of high-valiared areas? And in some cases, it was about rethinking their production. You know, could they do things differently, which allowed them to be competitive still? And what was interesting is you've got a real partnership going on there between the companies that had to open their books to allow other people to come in. You had the trade unions involved. You had academics involved. And you had consultants involved. And in many of those cases, the academics acted as the kind of brokers between. Because in some cases, it was about, for example, rethinking work design. And so what you wanted were consultants to come in to help you change your work processes. So there is possibility for preventing people from moving down from high road to low road. But the key question I think in the UK is how do we move from low road to high road? And I think there are two ways you can think about doing this. One is you block off the low road. And this is one of the things colleagues have been very keen to say. And you encourage, or the phrase we use is you pave the high road. So you encourage companies to come down that. And it might be worth picking some of those issues up a bit later on. But I think in a kind of nutshell, that's where we are in the UK. Prensity to go down the low road, to follow the low road, and the trick for us is to think about how we can break out of that and move towards the high road. That's a very helpful kind of top level summary, but just to drill down a little bit more, going back to the example I quoted you, West of Scotland manufacturer competition in China and Eastern Europe pressure on wages. So how do they get from where they are today to where you think they should be on the high road? What's the journey? If we accept there's a logic, which is your business strategy, the way you organise your organisation through to your human resource, let's call it. I think of it as business development, work, organisational development, workforce development. If you think of that link, and if the causal chain goes from where you position yourself in terms of business through to your workforce, what we need to do is help those companies rethink their business. So we need to help them with their business development. Because if it's true, good question. The government has to take a lead on this, but I don't think it's the task of government to start managing firms. There are contextual ways around, contextual things that you can do around that. One of the things I've suggested in my submission is we need to think about management education. If people think that opting for the low road is the easiest way forward, because it does make money. I mean, there are companies, as we all know, who have simplified work processes, which are low-skill jobs, low-pay jobs, and they make money. But what's very interesting about those companies is they do make money, but their relative performance compared to those companies which operate in high value of the markets is diminishing. We know that from evidence across the UK. In other words, it's profitable now, but in 10 years' time it won't be as profitable. So we have to start helping those companies to do that. One way is to start, I think, re-educating leaders and companies and managing companies to open up their horizons to think about something else. So one thing we should be thinking about is management education here. The other thing, which I think we do relatively well, but perhaps we ought to be thinking about consolidating and expanding that, is helping people think about understanding and reading the market. I think, for example, there are lots of small firms who would like to offer better job quality. I would call them the kind of willing employers. They know the benefits of it, but they don't know how to do it. Either because they don't have the capacity, because they're running around like headless chickens in many cases, people who own small firms, because they're doing lots of tasks, they're doing the finance, they're doing the HR, they're doing the marketing. So they don't have the capacity to do it, or in many cases they don't have the capability to do it, because a lot of them haven't gone through an educational process.  So we can do things to help those people, we can intervene and help them read the market and understand the market and see where market opportunities are. That is where government and government agencies do have a role. OK. I know that other members will explore quite a lot of these issues. Before I bring in Lewis MacDonald who wants to follow this up, maybe John McGurk, do you want to add anything or contradict anything that you've heard so far? No, I think that there is a kind of polarised argument between low-road flexibility and high-road competition. I think one of the things you have to be mindful of is the nature of the competition globally and the nature of the labour market globally and productivity. So, if you look at China, for example, China is often used as a shorthand for that's what we need to compete against. China now actually has rising unit labour costs because it's used up a large surplus, a migrating labour from the rural hinterlands. That labour force is becoming more assertive even within a very authoritarian political structure. China is now offshoring quite a lot of low-cost manufacturing in places like Vietnam, Indonesia, etc. The fact is that, as the unit labour costs increase for producing high-value manufactured and finished goods, a lot of them go back to Europe. Now, the issue is which part of Europe do they go back to and quite often the assumption is that Germany makes the things that China makes things with machine tools, etc. But there are other parts of European economy that can prosper by developing high-value manufacturing. Scotland is one of them, but you have to be mindful about that. There has to be a really open dialogue between business, unions and government about how you develop a high-road economy. Everybody's got a different view about how you do that. The fact is that you will have a hybrid economy of companies as Professor Warhurst says, who are opening a very low-cost production model and quite profitable at that, but in the long term that's not necessarily sustainable. But how do you do that? I think it's through innovation skills and learning and that's a very easy and glib answer. But there's a lot of evidence from international comparative research that that's the way that you build those clusters of high-value manufacturing and high-value service industries. We've had this position in the UK and in Scotland for about 20 years now that the way we compete against countries like China is that we will take the high value added stuff and the Chinese will take the low value added stuff. And our response to that has been to expand higher education and have more high-skilled workers as graduates. Two things have happened. One is we're not using those graduates properly. They're vastly undutilised. And the second is we fail to appreciate that China creates more graduates in one year than Scotland has in total. We're just starting a project now in my institute looking at innovation and job quality in China and it's astounding the amount of graduates who are created every year in China. I mean they will be competing on brains too in the future. I mean just on that point I noticed John McGurk in your submission you say that 58.8% of UK graduates are non-graduate jobs, which is a very striking statistic. Yeah absolutely and I think there's a long history of research looking at it is in a very simple sort of question to pose it. Are more graduates likely to lead to a more productive economy and it obviously depends on what they're doing. It depends on the workplaces they're in. It depends on how their jobs are designed and enriched. It depends on how the competitive strategies are designed so that people can be more productive and higher paid and if they're not then they won't be. We've just produced a major report on over qualification. Obviously creating lots of graduates is generally a good thing but what we've got to think about is what skills those graduates are attaining. Often we aren't focusing on those sectors that are going to be most productive for the international competition that we face. Okay well lots of members want to come in with follow-ups but I'll promise Lewis MacDonald first of all. Thank you very much and I was very struck by some of the evidence we've heard already but Chris Warhurston has written submission said that what the UK lacks is a ministry for Labour and that I guess points us directly to the question of if there is government intervention what form should that take and the discussion you've just had about graduates I think illustrates governments of all parties have promoted higher levels of graduate completions and yet that's not necessarily addressed those issues that you described. What should government be doing and how should government be doing it in terms of paving the high road or in terms of enabling the right skills mix to come out of our education institutions. Is the current balance between further and higher education too far in favour of higher education and not far enough in favour of trade skills? If you just focus on the skills issue for a second it's quite clear that we are oversupplying graduates. There was a belief following that logic I just talked about you start with your business development which filters through to your organisation development which filters through to your workforce development. That was the chain. Those people who are arguing that the point of intervention for government was in workforce development in other words increase the supply of graduates and the argument went something like you create all these graduates you put them into non-graduate workplaces or jobs they would bring all of these skills and abilities with them and they would start growing the jobs in order to accommodate them employers would have to reorganise their organisation in other words allow them to be able to make inputs and give them a voice and that would somehow push firms up the value chain they would have to compete in different areas to be able to accommodate them. It just hasn't happened. What we're seeing is graduates entering non-graduate jobs. The funny thing is we don't actually know what happens to those graduates in non-graduate jobs or two things. We don't really know what's happening. We've been conducting just finishing off some research which has been looking at what the effect of graduates in a state agency in Scotland which has traditionally been a non-graduate job and what we're finding is what we would call hybrid workplaces. Graduates and non-graduates are doing exactly the same job for the same wages and in many cases employers really don't know what the graduates bring. They know intuitively that they're graduates and they should be bright and they should be blah blah blah blah but beyond all of that they really don't know what they're doing. In some cases they hire them because they're available not because there's a real desire for them and the second thing related to that is we don't know what's happening to the non-graduates. We've completely forgotten that there's a huge swath of people out there who are non-graduates who are now competing with graduates for their jobs and are they going to be pushed out of those jobs in the future. In the middle we used to have fairly bright working-class kids who are now being encouraged to go to university but who would have gone into the trades in the past and it's interesting there are no huge skill shortages in Scotland except in the intermediate areas. Some of the work I've been doing in Glasgow with some of the skill trades they're really crying out for apprentices. Good apprentices, the old apprentices, people who would spend three, four, sometimes five years learning a craft and they can't find them now because these kids have been pushed into higher education and where they're learning their skills is in the words effectively of one of my interviewees was at the board not the bench. So the great at doing computer-aided design but you put them in front of some tools and they're not skilled for that. That's partly because we've been encouraging people to go into higher education and it's partly because the people who are teaching them have also gone through higher education rather than me at the bench. So there's a lot of skills issues we need to address in Scotland. So the short answer is actually yes there is a need to rebalance but if we are going to rebalance we need to think about how people are taught and I think this is a slightly different question now. We need to think about a kind of pipe chain for apprenticeships which does link to job quality. The people who are coming into apprenticeships, how they're taught, how they link to businesses because businesses will only take apprenticeships if there's a business need for them and for the people themselves to encourage them to go into further education, apprenticeships rather than higher education they're going to have to go into good jobs. There's no point in redirecting them from higher education to further education in apprenticeships if at the end of it they don't come out with good jobs. I'm sorry. I was going to ask the other side of the same coin which is about blocking the low road and what more government can do and in this context I'm thinking specifically Scottish Government and Scottish Local Government and Public Bodies, what more government can do to discourage employers from following the low value, low wage, low quality jobs route? I think one of the key issues is around if you're trying to compete in a global economy as a small open mature economy such as Scotland then what you've got is you do have a highly educated population whether they're educated in the right subjects, et cetera is something that you can think about and address. You do have established industries that have got particular business models that have developed over time and you do have a fairly active government that wants to intervene and I think in a helpful and supportive way. Also I think one of the issues about Scotland is it's small enough to be scalable and it's very clubbable, very well-networked. People can get together in different groups and do things that can make a difference and I think the biggest impact is through innovation. I think the Scottish Government's innovation centres and I declare an interest here because I sit on the board for construction innovation or the construction Scotland innovation centre and the chief executive of that board and the chairman specifically asked me to sit on that board because I had labour market expertise but also because they knew that I had started off in the industry as an apprentice as an apprentice Tyler many years ago and basically I went through a period of exploitative, low-skilled apprenticeship where we were effectively used as basically I suppose manual labour and I wasn't the big bully guy that I am now. I was a bit of a waif. I had a white boiler suit which is always a bad thing on a Glasgow building site but the fact is that it made me reflect on the fact that how much have things changed how much have we changed the supply chain of skills and the fact is that in the construction industry the industry is moving towards a revolutionary new form of construction a lot of it is taking place in factories a lot of it requires different skills and yet we've still got a very male dominated, very hard scrabble industry now a lot of people in the industry are doing a lot to try and address that but one of the key issues is if you drive innovation at the top then people adapt their business models to that then you have to support the biggest sector which is the SMEs to try and compete in that and that's a real challenge I'm sure we'll say much more about. I promise I'll bring the government on this point yet and then I'll bring Enesil. I was just wondering what you felt about, this is to John McGurk I was taking about 59 per cent of UK graduates that are in non-graduate jobs and I was just wondering what you thought should be the role of universities in that because yesterday during the education and culture committee we heard that in Scotland is 11,000 ICT vacancies 150,000 across Europe engineering you've already touched upon the fact that at technician level is a difficulty but it's also a difficulty for graduate engineers which is having an impact on the ability for companies to grow so is the focus of universities wrong? Is it not that it's not the number of graduates but it's the focus or it's the courses that the graduates have undertaken that are not in tune with the economy's requirements? I think the issue is that we do have lots of people doing humanities and professional degrees and not enough people doing technical and engineering subjects now the thing is without having a centralised planned economy where you point the finger at people and tell them what industry to go into how do you do that? You build, we hope, the desire and the aspiration for young people to go into those roles and not just young people because we've got an ageing labour force in Scotland and we in CIPD through a Scotland-skilled future report talk about from preschool to pension age and beyond we have to think about the whole skills supply chain in the labour market and one of the key issues is that we have to build young people from preschool which is well known to have massive benefits in terms of integrating the most excluded young people in the labour market at an early age and we have to focus on good vocational education where appropriate in the school system and of course the developing young workforce commission has made big strides on that but when we get to university we have to think seriously about what kind of economy we're shaping up to now I'm somebody that benefited from doing social sciences and aspects of humanities at university I wouldn't want to say that we shift the entire curriculum but maybe we've got to think about having a slightly more specialised form a technical education in Scotland that would fit in with our emerging industries such as biotech, the IT industry, green energy etc we've probably got to think about that and some people sometimes think that the polytechnic sector delivered quite a lot of those skills and are fairly focused so maybe sometimes we've got to go back to the past to think about our future I think one of the things we often forget about higher education is it started off effectively as a vocational training college it was for law, medicine and the clergy and we sometimes view higher education through the prism of the 1960s and liberal arts education now with cost pressures on higher education both from the top in terms of funding it and from the bottom in terms of people participating in it there is now a legitimate question about what is the function of higher education if it's to create a healthier workforce and happier workforce you provide that liberal arts education that's great you do the thing where they are able to engage in the world differently but what's been very interesting over the last couple of years is research has come out of America which has tested the thinking skills as we used to call them in Scotland and the old Scottish executive the thinking skills of students as they went into universities and as they came out of universities and Hayhoe let's say is very uneven some students actually diminished their thinking skills in university some did very well, they just plodded along and some enhanced them and I think one of the things we should be thinking about is looking at what happens inside higher education and the UK government in England is thinking about this with Hefker this learning gain initiative and it's politically with a small piece it's a very tricky thing to do but it is an important thing for us to think about in the context of universities and higher education always being about vocational training in its broadest sense The other point I was wanting to make on it was within the papers that we were given there was two other stats that jumped out at me one that says it found that only 36% of employees felt their managers usually discussed training and development opportunities with them and the other one was that data from the UK Commission for Employment and Skills Survey shows that 28% of Scottish employers provide no training to their staff Is that linked to the fact that there is an over-provision of graduates or is there other reasons for that, those levels? I think it obviously depends on the business and it depends on the type of work that's undertaken for example it's very easy to say we train every day because you do compliance training so you might have a hospitality and tourism provider who has to provide a lot of health and safety hygiene training etc and you might look like a higher trainer than somebody in the other sector who isn't in that sort of compliance area so what you have to think about is what would be, and it's very difficult to drill down into what that industry if it was taking a more high road approach would be seeing as the appropriate training to equip people for that environment but I wouldn't say that an absence of training is automatically a sign that employers are engaging with and they need to increase their workforce but the issue is where people are in a complex and evolving labour market and they're not being trained they're obviously not keeping up with the kind of skills that have to be developed and that may well mean that they're working in a fairly low skill kind of low intensity environment where that's not necessary and that is a bigger picture for us in Scotland on how we build the industries that actually require training and skills because the biggest issue around training is not just the supply it's the demand from employers and productivity in the UK over the last seven or eight years has started to fall is that a reflection of the lack of training that's out there? Well, I mean productivities, well, the term is multifactorial you know, as in you've got capital you've got labour, you've got investment and we've just did some research in CIPD in a labour market team which was published on Friday which drills down into what employers are doing we've got unpanelled survey data which looks into what they're doing in terms of capital so what they're doing in terms of capital investment which is either substituting labour for machines or enhancing the productivity of labour through investment in machines so, for example, supermarkets with automated tells quite often the staff are doing other things like helping to introduce people to new products et cetera and giving more customer service and quite often they're showing people how to use the machines as well so the issue is how are people using capital in machines then there's issues about people who we had several cohorts of employer and the most common in the recession which you would expect was a kind of cost-cutting mentality which chimes with the evidence that Professor Warhurst was giving because they're in a survival mode you know, they're trying to keep their businesses going in a very difficult environment and quite often that means that you're having a you know, suspend investment make sure that you're batting in down the hatches et cetera and you're on a survival path as we are coming out of the recession we're seeing more going towards trying to invest in both capital and skills because you know, it's obviously a circular argument but if you invest in capital without skills then you won't get the productivity out of the capital investment and that's a key issue and I can obviously make that report available to the committee Thanks Thank you Dennis Robertson Thank you, convener part of what I was going to come in with the graduates has already been answered but in respect of the graduate programme Serene Wooden, his report is more or less saying that universities and colleges have got to sort of be a bit better than the thinking of the pathways for their graduates Now in Aberdeen Aberdeen University, Robert Gordon's and North East College are working together which is perhaps a new concept in terms of the colleges and universities working together but they're actually working to determine what skills are required at the moment to try and encourage graduates to go down a particular path but also to try and encourage people going through the college to take up particular skills and the other thing is that I wondered what your opinion is should we be trying to ensure that there is no differential in our thinking towards someone who is a graduate from university or someone coming out of college because in terms of their ability and what they're bringing to society could well be just in terms of equality just as equal and we should be giving it a level status Professor Warhurst I think the short answer this is a question about parity and again we sometimes look back to necessarily a golden age but an age which was very defining in terms of our thinking which is the 1960s when we created that binary divide effectively and it looks as if it's become set in stone but actually if I look at somewhere like Warwick University which is one of the leading universities in the UK has a global reputation we actually do a lot of what we would call vocational training and we even have now the higher apprentices in there and Warwick University its manufacturing group has created schools effectively which are picking people up from the ages of 14 now to do that so there can be models of integration but it has to be done properly and I think in terms of whether we can have parity it depends on the quality and the level of further education and it has further education and I say this as somebody who might be shooting himself speaking from higher education further education has been relatively neglected across the UK and I think that's something we need to address Beyond that however if we are going to integrate we need to have some kind of system or mechanism for linking up not just the colleges and universities but what employers need as well so in effect we will be creating some kind of ecosystem where there will be some kind of meeting place some kind of protocols where we define the responsibilities and resources where people are supplying vocational education in its broadest sense where that's further education and higher education and even some of the private providers with the people who are going to be using those skills employers and we sometimes talk about clusters in Scotland but actually we don't have effective mechanisms where we coordinate those clusters and this is where the role of government can come in not as the institution if you like which dictates what goes on inside the clusters but provides the form in which these clusters can meet and operate by creating those protocols and this is something I think probably about seven years ago we tried to do it when I was at Strathclyde we tried to bring people together to say what is the best thinking around an in-call skills ecosystems bringing all the parties together so we try and create some protocols in Scotland for how to operate in particular sectors whether that's the creative industries whether that's food processing, whisky whatever we want to define as our successful sectors how we coordinate that so that integration will only work if we've got the right framework around it and that's a role that government can do provide the framework I wonder just to follow up to that if, convener you made it, let me do this at the beginning when we took the evidence sessions back in the CBI at that stage said it wasn't advisable for governments to determine what was a good or bad quality of work and we shouldn't even be attempting a definition and what I'm hearing this morning is that there's a role for government but do you agree with the CBI in some respects that it's not up to government to determine not up to politicians at saying to determine what is the good or bad quality in terms of employment because in some respects you're actually suggesting it is a role for government I think it's up to politicians to create a dialogue around key issues such as the future of work and to listen to different stakeholders different parts of society around that and then to feed that into the policy making it would be most governments do that obviously if government comes up with a blueprint that's less desirable if it hasn't had the expertise of industry, of unions, of other parties that have got a viewpoint on the future of work and I think the Scottish government's approach is very much to creating that dialogue from what I can see. So you wouldn't agree with the CBI's? I think it's the kind of polarising the issue the issue is that government should obviously be interested in the quality of the labour market it's part of how a society effectively functions it's the critical part and should be. I think there are many stakeholders with an interest in job quality all employers in one sense have an interest in job quality whether they're interested in bad jobs or good jobs in creating them the CBI is one of those stakeholders it's got a role and it has a legitimate voice but its focus can be different from that of the government their interests can coincide but their interests can be different the CBI may be representing certain employers the role of the government is to represent its citizens in its broadest sense and when we start thinking about that it may be that good jobs provide other outcomes than the outcomes that the CBI want and this is one of the things I put in my submission the Scottish Parliament and this committee have to think seriously about what they want from job quality now if it's about making Scotland wealthier then the point of intervention is wages we have to a living wage for example if it's about wanting the Scottish economy to be more competitive through innovation it's about focusing on work design and job design and that organisational development but I think one of the things we have to bear in mind about organisations like the CBI is they may speak with one voice which is for the CBI but they don't necessarily speak for all employers and I think what we have to appreciate is that employers whether in the public sector I think we include the public sector here the private sector or the voluntary sector are not all the same when it comes to job quality there are some good employers out there who either by design or by default because of the business systems or because they've got a moral engagement with it provide good jobs in Scotland they care about their workforce there is another group of employers who I think are what I would call the willing employers there are those employers who currently don't provide what we might say some of the best jobs but would probably be willing to do so but they don't know how to do it and this is the link to the SMEs I made before they don't have the capacities for example or they don't have the capabilities there's a third set of employers I think who are indifferent and they currently offer bad jobs because there's no incentive to do otherwise why change a model that works and there's a final group of employers who I would regard as bad employers their business model is built on creating bad jobs now I think the bulk of employers are in those middle two groups the willing and the indifferent the extremes are probably those who are providing good jobs and providing bad jobs but the government's responses to those employers has to be different I think with the good employers we should be lauding them setting them up as exemplars to show what can be done for those who are willing we have to provide the support for them for the third group the indifferent I think it's about educating them and for the fourth group the bad employers that's where we regulate Do you believe that the good willing and the indifferent are also mindful of the well-being of their employees because part of what our inquiry is is looking at the impact on obviously people's lives and their health and well-being I suspect the majority of employers look at their employers through two lenses one is simply as units to help them to achieve what they want to achieve but on the other hand they also realise that what those employers offer in terms of jobs impacts their employees and impacts their businesses as well if employers are offering the kinds of jobs which provide employment insecurity at the first opportunity those employees will leave so retention becomes an issue for employers and recruiting people costs employers money so having a committed workforce which is engaged because they think their employers value them is cost effective to employers On well-being very quickly key issue when you're trying to compete in a global economy you're trying to lift up yourself continually up the value chain you're continually trying to innovate etc you're going to have lots of shifts and changes you're going to have disruptions and transitions and what you need at the centre of that is resilience well-being is part of resilience we talk about engagement well-being and resilience as being the key outputs we should be expecting from the workplace once we get people into jobs we get them trained we should keep them engaged we should keep them well and that obviously has benefits for the society that we're in with the fairly deep-seated health and socioeconomic problems we have and we should keep them resilient so that they can be agile and adaptable to change and that means giving them skills giving them support and development and it's easy to say all of that you know to do that on a government scale is quite challenging and I think one of the key issues I've come back to is the fact that we need to create a dialogue around the need for that what the role of government is what the role of individual is and what the role of employers are I'm conscious we're two thirds of the way through our time and there's a number of members still to come in so we'll need to sharpen up a little bit I've got two members who want to come in on job quality Chick Brody then Patrick Harvie's Yes, good morning In the last question there is a new definition of the good, the bad and the ugly I just wonder if I haven't yet heard what we mean by job quality I know that we're doing Australia using our funds which is great developing a quality index but you, Professor Waters have just mentioned the good whether it's a good job or a bad job I just wonder in terms of looking at we talked about clusters in Scotland and you also talked earlier about Germany if you look at the middle strand exercise in Germany where there's involvement of the employees there are small companies and we mentioned the problems with the challenges for SMEs and they compete globally I just wonder is the Scottish economy structured the way that we think it should be are we trying to do too much and should we focus on specifically developing the experience in specific industries so that the brand of Scotland becomes much better known I mean I know what food and drink it is than it currently is and just one other question Professor Waters talked about training which is absolutely imperative I haven't heard the word leadership yet which is more important I mean how do we find the leaders I did mention the word leadership leadership and management I think when I look at if you look at examples of where job quality has been improved for example in the United States one of the key drivers of that change has been leadership but two types of leadership one is political leadership and the other is senior management leadership so for example if you look at some of if you look at some of the work around just trying to think of the building industry the construction trade in Los Angeles there have been initiatives there where they've realised that it's not simply enough for the local state or local municipality to create employment standards those standards have to be enforced and so what they've brought in is a model which Janice Fine and colleagues would call tripartism which is a strange word now in the UK but was very prevalent at one stage where the state provides sets of standards employers implement them but there's a third party which is monitoring them now those could be trade unions they could be community groups but the trigger for them is the political leadership it was very much driven by the election of particular mers around Los Angeles on the other hand if you think about some of the initiatives around skills utilisation skills utilisation has a whole set of practices in the workplace job design, work design, everything else but it only works if senior management buy into that and there is for example in Australia the government has been putting money in to try and improve the level of education for senior managers so around leadership and senior management and that's one of the things flagged in my submission I seriously think there is an exercise to be done in mapping what's taught in business schools in Scotland are we teaching the next generation the right things are we teaching them that job quality makes a difference I suspect I don't often bet but I suspect if we were to bet on it there would be absolutely no jobs on the importance of job quality being taught in Scottish business schools there will be lots on financialisation risk taking all those kinds of things but very little on what we might call the meet and veg the stuff that works in workplaces and part of that has to therefore be about changing where that leaders think I mean a very quick answer on the middle strand issue would be that massively complex layered issue around how companies are financed the issues about patient capital etc I think Jim Maith has done some great thinking on this under the original Fair Work commission and we have to really think about how we develop a sector core of Scottish industries that can start to build that capability that starts with innovation and links down through education and looking at the whole vocational education aspect of it but there's also a massive part around how business is financed how we treat the returns to various stakeholders etc over timescale and these are very big challenges for any country you can't adopt and import the German model wholesale and I don't think anybody thinks she can Forgive me if I look at Tuscany where they focus on furniture and the world running around for that Switzerland on watches and chocolates I mean my question is are we trying to do too much and should we be concentrating on fewer industries it can't be just a few sectors but are we trying to do too much I think we can focus through the innovation approach on key industries like oil and gas we've got competitive advantage a global profile energy, green energy, construction etc I think what we'll find out is as the innovation process takes place we'll see which industries can stand up in that competitive heat and can actually innovate Dennis Robertson's questions brought it into some of the territory I wanted to explore there's perhaps understandably been lots of talking the first half of the session about rising up the value chain and whether wages are competitiveness or the goal or the point of intervention those things matter I don't want to take away from that but even a job toward the lower end of the pay scale can leave somebody feeling respected or treated with contempt can leave somebody feeling they've got a voice at work or less so that they're being ignored Am I right in thinking that what Professor Warhurst was talking about the indifferent group of employers that this is where the intervention is needed the Scottish Government has limited options for regulating the genuinely bad exploitative employers but is there a specific programme that could be designed within the powers that the Scottish Government has we can't necessarily get recommendations from this committee to be complied with by the UK Government are there things that the Scottish Government could do in relation to those wider aspects of wellbeing and job quality which may be subjective but may be within the power of the current devolved administration to raise standards up in those other aspects in that intermediate group that indifferent group I think one of the things we need to recognise is that not all economies can be high skilled economies I mean if everybody was a high skilled economy there'd be no competition and in the same way that within countries not all industries can be high road or high skilled industries we know there are some we know there are some occupations and some industries which we're not going to make the current of huge leaps up is a short term from low road to high road if we ever will and one of the things I would probably invite the committee to think about and the inquiry to think about is something called employment enrichment in other words it might be that we can't at least in the short term get organisations to rethink their work but we can't get them to rethink their employment and the two things are quite distinct the work is what people do rashing bits of metal selling records selling jumpers or something else that's their work but the terms and conditions of their employment can be separated out and we can think about trying to boost that employment and there are a couple of areas you might think about health and safety working time contracts pay training and paid entitlements some of those areas the Scottish Parliament has responsibility for some of them they haven't but my understanding is they're pushing for them so if you look at health and safety for example we should be not just making sure that standards exist but they're being enforced and I mean health and safety physical health and safety I mean some of the psychosocial health and safety same with working time European Union has indicated and has regulations on the length of working time but we also have something which I would call we should have something called protected time which is those kind of unsocial hours and when you marry the two together health and safety and working time we tend to find that in research unsocial hours affects people's health working on social hours if you're working constantly in night shifts you're going to have illnesses later on in life if you're on a precarious employment contract that also affects your health it also affects intergeneration well-being as well that's some of the research which has come out of the United States so there you can think about health and safety working time and contracts all bundled up together pay we can think about pay we've been the UK government sets the national minimum wage but Scotland has really taken a lead on pushing the living wage now you can do that without regulation it would be nice if Scotland moved to becoming a living wage country I mean that would be a real branding for this country and we've got some responsibilities we can affect some of the training and some of that training should be helping companies to do jobs better and to do advances in we can use training to help companies to do their jobs better and to get more out of their workforce but we can also use training to help people get out of those bad jobs either through internal labour markets or external labour markets and one of the things that the Scottish Government was good at in the past was something called the Union Learning Fund that really helped people at the bottom end of the labour market to take up education opportunities and for them to to move not just on a skills escalator where they improve their skills but also job escalators they moved up into different jobs with colleagues in Scotland who do some work on that and paid entitlements as well I mean we can't at the moment legislate in Scotland on paid entitlements but we can ensure that they're being enforced so there are things that we can do in Scotland I think to enrich employment at the very least I mean I was interested all these things are important I'm not trying to take away from those objective factors I was trying to get towards some of the more subjective factors that impact on how somebody feels about the quality of their employment because we've heard evidence from NHS Scotland about the impact that simply feeling that you're respected at work can have on somebody's health and wellbeing and then their ability to progress in work and I'm interested in might be dismissive to call it those softer issues but I'm interested in what needs to happen to ensure that employers who may be in that indifferent category see these things as more important than they currently do I think there's obviously in cases where there's going to be abuse of people's rights in the labour market then regulation is something that governments of all persuasions have been ready to undertake the real issue is that you can't regulate every individual workplace in every individual contract what you can do is create an aspiration to improve workplaces at every level and I think the work that the Scottish Government are undertaking under the Fair Work Convention is creating a mood that will actually drag a lot of those employers that are indifferent because they'll be in supply chains they'll be part of larger organisations that will possibly start to put pressure on them to live up to different labour market standards they'll be part of public procurement chains etc so there are lots of opportunities through which we can actually address those issues that the subjective health and wellbeing issues is well known, there's a lot of research on the fact that it increases the profitability of firms if they've got high subjective wellbeing so that in itself is a business benefit that has to be communicated. One of the things I've been really impressed by is the living wage campaign in Scotland where a lot of the benefits of actually paying higher wages and having higher skill people have been demonstrated by organisations that had previously been unaware, that's part of dialogue and in Scotland we've got the scale and the networks to be able to do that we should at least try that. I think the kind of questions around the kind of let's call it soft power to try and influence the kind of the willing in different employers I think the three ways we can do this one is the educative function that I've mentioned before we have to start thinking about how we educate senior managers and the people who are going through universities and further education. The second is about cultural change it's about creating dialogue and signaling that these things are important as John was suggesting and I think this inquiry and the third work commission are indications of that. We're flagging what's now important to the Scottish Parliament and to the Scottish people and the third just picking up on John's point is about public procurement. We've talked in the past about public procurement and how it can be used as a lever to obtain for example employers training, apprentices and things but one small thing we could do is attach to public procurement contracts that the companies that winters contracts have to report on their job quality. Now to do that we have to make sure that it's not burdensome for the companies so you do need some simple indicators of job quality and you ask them to report on it as part of having that contract. That goes back to a point that we mentioned right in the beginning which is what is job quality and those markers. So you can see that what is job quality is not an academic debate, it could well be a practical issue for you but there's no reason why we can't ask those companies to report on their job quality. I'm conscious of the time we've got two members who want to come in still. John McAlpine first as briefly as you can. I will be brief. Professor, in point 12 of your written evidence I was quite struck by when you say when governments fail to act trade unions and community organisations often step in sometimes working together but you go on to talk about how union influence has declined and the responsibility for having a better job has shifted on to the shoulders of the individuals. What role do you see for the trade unions going forward in improving job quality given this decline? I think this is one of the tricky issues around job quality. We know that in the past job quality has been improved through the interventions of trade unions and the good examples of that is the US auto industry. Jobs, wages, prospects, health and safety were all improved because trade unions were given the opportunity to be able to negotiate with employers. We know currently that whether it's in Germany and the involvement of supervisory boards which are often in the pinnings by the involvement of trade unions or whether it's even in places like Los Angeles which I just mentioned in the construction industry and also in the janitors industry trade unions have got a real role in that. We know in London citizens as it first started off which was part of the living wage campaign came in that that was a community group which was ironically funded by American trade unions in London. So there is a definite role for trade unions in this. The real issue for us is how we get trade unions to be involved in that. Given that trade union involvement in the UK generally is pretty low. It's slightly higher in Scotland than it is across the UK but I think you're right, one of the issues is trying to find ways to do that. We can do it at different levels however. We can do it at national level by involving trade unions in part of that and by talking about the dialogue and cultural change. We can do it at industry or sector level. One of the things about Germany is that there are sectoral agreements. So all employees are covered whether or not they're in trade unions and we can do it at the workplace level. So we need to think about, again it's about where are the points of intervention. I'm mindful of the time as well. I'm quite happy. Richard Lyle. I'm also the time and Professor Warhurst you have actually come out with quite a number of points which I'll take away and look at. I'll go back to the 60s actually I was employed in the retail trade for 20 years. Went to night school got certificates and got trained. Nowadays we have 24 hour shops people working to 10 o'clock at night you covered all the points some good jobs, some bad jobs and retail and care and hospitality. What further situation do you think what further can be done by employers to improve the job quality because I would suggest that the job quality and retail has diminished in the last 30 years. I think one of the issues in the past when people did those kind of jobs and people did work night shifts. My father worked night shifts for example. The difference between then and now is that they were paid differential compensations for those which signalled that they weren't necessarily good and this is what I mean by protected time. It turns out that protected time is important to people's health and welfare. So we either signalled that they should be compensated or wherever possible we should be encouraging employers to moderate those effects by having decent shift rotor systems for example and lots of work coming out of Australia around this issue. How we might do that I can try and push that towards the inquiry if that would be helpful. Just coming on briefly on the point about trade unions. We do in the Scotland Skilled Future report talk about the role of trade unions as part of the leadership of Scotland's labour market if you like. So we ask employers to raise their ambition. Well everybody does but part of what employers should be doing is raising their ambition competing internationally, focusing on exports, innovation etc. Unions I think to be credible partners in this kind of improvement of the Scottish labour market of the Scottish economy have to move beyond their traditional bargaining agendas and have to get much more into trying to grow the cake. I'm a big advocate of unions I've spent after my brief sojourn in construction I was a train driver for 10 years I was a shop steward I was involved in unions then Later on after a career in academia I was the director of research for one of the most powerful unions in the country which is now probably subject to a lot of challenges and pressures which is the airline pilots association in Dalpa and I'm a big believer in the role that unions can play in developing an economy in a labour market but they have to have a much wider discussion that goes beyond their traditional bargaining agenda I just want to come back briefly to an interesting comment about maybe doing yourself a job that we should have more emphasis placed in colleges rather than universities I believe that university, I didn't have the opportunity to go to university but my kids did and my son is now in a job which pays more than what I get and I'm proud of that but basically should universities concentrate on producing our quality quality graduates of tomorrow and your point about colleges, could you just explain again what you feel colleges should be doing there are two debates one is about whether we want to maintain the binary divide between FE and HE and I think that is a legitimate debate to be had if we decide that there are different levels of skill which require different forms of pedagogy then we might want to maintain that binary divide if we think that there's a closing of the gap because technical education has become more complex and because higher education has become very broad and I use that word advisedly then we may want to think about rethink the binary divide but the second debate is about if it's kept separate what is the function of higher education is it to provide a liberal education for young people in other words to make them to generally give them a set of generic skills like problem solving and everything else or is it about training for the higher professions law, medicine, accountancy and everything else and there are two separate debates one I think follows from the other but they are very intertwined we do need to start thinking about some of these debates I mean just quickly my previous role in CIPD was heading up our learning and development research and what we know about how people learn and develop is completely at odds with how we additionally deliver learning in higher and further education institutions we've got the fact that learning access to learning material and knowledge is almost limitless we still insist on assuming that people have to go through particular paths to acquire knowledge now it's going to take a big shift in our mindset to start thinking about how we acquire knowledge in a much more fluid way but one of the issues that I think could be a real separation is around the fact that like the work that's been done in the north-east and I've visited north-east college is that there has to be a real co-operation saying this is the kind of talent that we need in this labour market and this is how it's going to be developed over that lifetime that it's in work sorry to talk very subjectively about people but if an individual is going to be developed it's got to be across their lifetime requirements are going to be changing constantly yet we assume that people are finished articles at 21-22 I went to university at 26 and ended up staying there which the typical mature student thing once I got there I couldn't leave but the fact is that I had a great education after contributing to the labour market and doing a productive job in it it served me well I think more people should get that opportunity Thank you I think that this has been really interesting there's loads of stuff for us to look at here I suppose how do we stop however just being seen by people in businesses this is good works our enquiry is not just about the impact of low quality jobs on people's health and wellbeing but whether that there for impacts are capacity to develop an economy that is a strong economy and can compete and I was struck by saying we need flexibility by which I think they mean jobs and security works for business because they can pick and choose but at the same time said we need high skills so I wonder how what is it we need to say to establish or is it the case that actually a good economy needs good quality jobs with people involved it's not just about being fair to people who happen to be in work the issue is that there's a mix of skills and qualifications and abilities in the labour market and we obviously do what we can to make sure everybody has the ability to participate the fact is that part of building a sustainable global internationally competitive small open economy is having flexibility as part of that but it's not building flexibility in as something that is a perpetual feature of the labour market and there are obviously atypical contracts in ways like for example zero hours contracts which offer flexibility which many people criticise but our research shows for example job satisfaction from zero hours contract workers and typical contract workers is roughly the same it's statistically insignificant that actually the number of zero hours contract hours the tenure of zero hours contracts are actually higher than a lot of full time jobs when you take in the actual hours worked now there are lots of egregious abuses of zero hours contracts and we've submitted strong evidence asking for example for the fact that zero hours contract workers should be compensated with at least an hours pay and expenses when hours aren't granted to them that there's a written copy of terms and conditions no later than two months into that contract we think these would strengthen the rights of the individual employees whilst maintaining the flexibility that we need but obviously the ambition is to get people into productive jobs that are high value and high earning but we've talked about the complexity of that and the number of factors that are involved so we need to be mindful that all of those factors are in the background and that we have to have a joined up solution I think John you're right there is a danger in engaging job quality in that some bodies some organisations will see it as purely about helping individuals this is an employee agenda I think there is an employee agenda here we have to be very clear about that I mean this is about workers in Scotland have job security so they have income security so they can plan if you're not bringing in steady wage it's difficult to plan your life it's difficult to buy a house it's difficult to pay for a holiday next summer if your workplace adversely impacts upon your health you are not going to be able to run around with your kids in the future you're not going to see your grandchildren because you're not going to live that long so there is an employee agenda here there is a lot to be gained for employers from job quality it's about we know that there are links between good job quality and higher productivity we know there are links between good job quality as John mentioned innovation we know there are links between good job quality and employers being able to attract and retain the right sort of workers so this is also an employer agenda it's also and this is where the Scottish Parliament this inquiry comes into it it's about Scotland there's an agenda here for Scotland on healthier and wealthier depending on how far we want to class wealthier citizens you need to look at job quality as well and it's one of the things which has become a mantra now but is certainly true is that we don't just need more jobs we do need better jobs we know that countries with job quality have higher rates of employment participation in other words there's more people in work and we also know those countries with highest job quality have lower unemployment rates now as academics we can make links to all of that in other words there's correlations between that the trick for academics and we've not yet solved that I have to hold our hands up here is we don't know the causal links how all those things work and that's a task for us but certainly it's a task that we'll be pursuing if there are the right signals from Scottish Parliament and other places that we should be doing this okay this is a fascinating discussion we'll do much more time but I'm afraid we are already over time so I have to unfortunately bring it to a close there but I thank both our witnesses very much for coming along this morning and sharing your thoughts with us we now have a brief suspension to allow a change over thank you very good okay if we can reconvene I'd like to welcome our second panel we're joined by Liz Cairns research officer for Unite Dave Watson who's Scottish organiser for Unison Cairns policy officer for Citizens Advice Scotland welcome to you all we'll run this till about 12 o'clock I think we've got a reasonable amount of time but if you saw any of the previous session I think there's a whole range of topics that are that we get into so I'd ask members if they would to keep their points as short and to the point as possible and similarly answers as short and to the point as possible and I'm giving me a reasonably disparate panel that members could initially address their questions to one panel member if you would like the income to come in and respond to a point and agree or disagree with your fellow panellist just to catch my eye and I'll bring you in as best I can as time allows I wonder if I could start off maybe initially address the question to Dave Watson and raise the question of the living wage which is an issue which we've taken a great deal of evidence on and everybody would agree that the living wage is a good thing and we should aspire to have it paid across public and private sectors there was an interesting issue that came up when the committee visited Paisley last week we met with Renfrewshire Council who have developed the ethical care charter where they aspire to not just ensure that they pay the living wage but all their contractors pay the living wage what was interesting was in the afternoon when we met some people from the local community some of us met a local employer in childcare who said she would be delighted to afford to pay her staff the living wage but couldn't afford to do that part of the issue was that the money coming from the local council in terms of partnership provision wasn't enough to allow her to do that and I suspect there's a very similar issue Mr Watson that you have identified in the care sector which is another sector that the committee is interested in where many care workers I'm sure are not paid the living wage and employers in that sector might well say well until the contracted rates that we receive from councils increase we're not in the position to do that so just get your perspective initially on that question if we're going to increase uptake of the living wage what impact is that going to have on public sector contractors I mean I think it's fair to say I think we've made very good progress with the Scottish living wage in terms of direct employment most of the public sector there are one or two little bits but most of them both pay the living wage and they've now got a mechanism for upgrading it as well so the key challenge is in procurement and obviously I was particularly asking our written evidence to talk about the care sector and I'm knowing obviously you're tripped down there to Paisley and I think the constraints essentially as to why the ethical care charter has not been picked up by more local authorities are two fold one is the legal issues and the second is budgets so I can deal with the issue of the legal issues and that being the view and the Scottish Government and us disagree on the legal interpretation of European law here that whether or not public authorities can specify making a mandatory requirement for public authorities to specify the living wage and that's been undoubtedly a blockage we disagree however I think if you look at my submission I've pointed to both the procurement act and the legislation called section 52 of the local government in Scotland that around for years ought to deliver the living wage and now we've got some guidance from the Scottish Government and now we're going to have very shortly understand the regulations that we've been working with Government on are going to be published now I think that's not going to say that you can make a mandatory requirement but it does set out a way by which public authorities can ensure that the living wage and I stress wider workforce issues are covered in contracts and I stress the wider workforce issues because there is a little point in the public body paying the living wage if then all happens is a cut travelling time put them on zero hours contracts and other poor quality factors that Chris and others talked about this morning so I think there is going to be a way forward there and I think the legal constraints we can get round those the second issue that employers rightly raise is the issue of cost and it is certainly the case that bad practice in the care sector has largely been driven by bad procurement and I have a lot of sympathy for if we look use Chris's or Chicks Good Bag and the Ugly's analogy earlier it's certainly true that there are some very good employers in the care sector and there are some very ugly employers in the care sector as well some very ugly ones and I've interviewed members in some of those that sector frankly they're not going to change their business model it's Parliament High that's their approach and they think they make their margins by essentially ripping off their workforce and actually ripping off clients as well that's how they do it but there is that group in between the care providers and others who I think make the point that if the funding was there then they not only would be delighted to do it but actually it would save them money things like the high turnover you get in the care sector at the moment I was talking to some of our senior social workers the other day who talk about they've got contracts with providers but they can't actually get any packages delivered because these providers don't have any staff and it costs at least £3,000 per turnover for a care worker this makes no sense so I think we would argue in terms of costs that more money needs to be put into social care I understand the political pressures on putting money in the health service but frankly social care would help the health service as well in clearing backlogs in bed blocking in hospitals so if we put the money into there it doesn't mean there are also efficiencies from paying that though ever you wouldn't have the turnover which delivers which has been recognised by the best private employers so I think the legal constraints I'm hopeful we can get over in the next few weeks when the new statutory regulations are published because that's a must do for local authorities and others unlike the current voluntary guidance and the second issue is about getting some more money into social care so that those employers can meet those requirements you do recognise that there are employers who would aspire to pay more because of the contracts that are coming down they can't afford to do that Liz Cairns do you want to add anything to what's been said to her? Just to pick up on the issue with regard to procurement that Dave mentioned one of the issues we would like to ensure would be that when it is paid the living wage is paid across procurement that it also reflects in the subcontracting element because you often see a situation where it's agreed at the contract level but then that contract is then subcontracted and can be subcontracted and before you know where you are you're quite a distance from the good intentions that were set out at the beginning so that was one of the things that I had raised as well as that I was pleased to see the organisational ladle and morrisons coming up with the living wage and ensuring that that's going to be delivered for thousands of workers in the supermarket industry so that was just that particular issue with procurement Thank you I've got another question but I think Joan McAvoy wants to go in with a supplementary I wouldn't want to misrepresent Renfrewshire council when we were there the head of procurement when she was outlining that the charter was very specific that they could not mandate the living wage that was their view and obviously that's also the view of the Welsh Government and Glasgow local authority so it's not just the Scottish Government that's saying that as I'm sure you're aware on that point there's obviously you're talking about other ways that you can do it and you'll be aware of the Scottish procurement policy note on 4 February 2015 that makes it clear that public bodies they cannot mandate the living wage but it's possible to encourage suppliers to play a living wage part of the procurement exercise I take it that you're supportive of that policy note We disagree with legal points and other committees have heard us we've given our legal view on these issues a lot of players made for example of the Dortmund case recently and that's covered where but the facts of that case are that the work in the Dortmund case was actually done in Poland because it was data input which is just not a comparable fact to the one we have here either way to the extent that the fine points of law on these matters the important thing is what do we achieve at the end of the day I think the procurement guidance note was very helpful and I said so our guidance to branches points to that I will also welcome I've seen the draft of the regulations when they come out because I think it shows a way of doing it but public authorities have got to do it there's no point issuing glorious guidance notes etc if people don't actually do it doing it means setting a clear procurement policy which says the living wage and broader workforce matters this is our procurement policy and then you don't have to then specify the fine points of detail there you then evaluate contracts and give a weighting a very significant weighting that would be another challenge with no point giving time little weightings for the wrong things giving significant weightings for the living wage and otherwise the workforce matters that right frankly most people bidding for contracts will recognise if you're one of the ugly employers who wants to operate in that particular old star model you're probably not going to bid and there's some evidence in some parts of Scotland that I've been to where local authorities have had this discussion and what's happened is the ugly employers have said games of bogey I'm off and actually they've managed to negotiate with a better one so I think the legal stuff is doable thank you I'll bring in John Lamont in a second one question I wanted to ask to Liz Cairns just picking up an issue to identify in the written submission from Unite there's a statement you make in page 6 of the submission on wage distribution where you say since 2008 we have seen a larger share of national income going to the top earners creating a widening income gap and greater income inequality but only measures published measures show that income inequality has reduced since 2008 so I'm wondering where this evidence to support this comes from I must have another copy of the submission but no there is definitely a movement with regards to income distribution however if you look at evidence from any research done by the High Pay Commission there is undoubtedly a shift in the difference between those at the top and those at the lower end of the wage spectrum I've got some figures with regards to information on jobs and in the 1990s the difference between high earners and average wage was 60 times and we're now talking within footsie 100 the difference between high earners and average wage in a company within footsie 100 is 160 times so there is undoubtedly a situation where companies pay is diverging between those at the top and those in average pay in the lower side of the earnings scale I'm looking at the Scottish Government's publication on poverty and income inequality in some detail they measure the gene coefficient for Scotland which is the measure of income inequality which in 2008-9 was 34 by 2013-14 had reduced to 30 substantial reduction they also measure the percentage of incomes going to bottom and top 3 deciles which have actually reduced since 2008-9 now the figures are not massive but the trend is certainly downwards I'm just concerned about your submission that I can't see any evidence to support well I think there's as we say as a research officer there's lies dam lies and there's statistics so we can all pull out something from somewhere that would give over our particular angle but I've certainly seen evidence where our members are not feeling that benefit that you're suggesting is there I heard earlier that they're looking for specific quotes from members or from workforce and I've certainly brought a number of things today with me with regards to personal experiences of people who are saying exactly that that they're not getting a fair share I'm sure there will be anecdotes like that I'm just making a point about the published data that we have available to us which but if you have anything that supports your view perhaps you can feed into the committee that way I'll bring in John Lamont I just ask for your comment on first of all Professor Warhurst's suggestion he said that at least something he could do would be ask those who benefit from the public pass to comment or report on job quality do you think that would make a difference I do see there's an opportunity to do that in the guidance that's about to be issued because I think it's very important to understand that the procurement agenda is not just about living wage very important wages are absolutely key to this but if you look at for example the work we did in the care sector very obvious that there was also big issues about job quality and in the new regulations essentially what local authorities have the opportunity to do is to specify in their procurement policy just the sort of reporting requirements that Chris was talking about so I think councils can do that in the new guidance and then what happens is if they set out that's a requirement the new contractors bid on that basis and say yes we will do it then you incorporate that in the contract so you're not imposing things because essentially people are bidding and that's how we get round the legal issues that we talked about earlier so I think that would be very helpful there are issues about and your enquiry has highlighted all these issues about how you define some of those but we've been doing tender evaluation now under the old section 52 provisions and the PPP protocol and we have checklists that we give our representatives on the evaluation panels and they include a whole range of things about quality of work etc so it's not difficult to do there are things you can measure there are things you can ask and I think that would be a very positive way forward but you do it apart the evaluation rather than as part of any tender specification to get round the perceived legal issues that concern the Scottish Government and certainly if the focus is not just on the benefits to the individual but to the quality of the service then it would allow providers to I think that to me that was crucial when I did the focus groups in the time to care report essentially in the care sector in Scotland there are two spikes of workers there are those in their late 20s and those in their late 40s those in their late 20s when you talk to them say we want to get out as quick as we can the moment there's a job in Liddles or anywhere else we're leaving the care sector those in their late 40s have been around a long time they talk about time to care they can tell you a time when they could spend time with their clients and they can no longer do that because they're rushing around just trying to do the 15 minute and other types of care visits so the quality issues for clients and others it's absolutely crucial to this agenda Can I ask two then on the issue of trade union representation I'm very struck on some of the evidence from citizens advice on actually what it was like to be a care worker and I'm sure from your experience as well the extent to which six hours work but take some 10 hours or whatever to get to and from the work and I think these are stories that probably need to go out there what some of the evidence has been given to us tells us that trade union there's a concentration of density of trade union membership in public admin, education, transport and health social work activities but what is the distinction within health and social care in terms of trade union representation between public, third and private sector the density I mean there are 200,000 people just under work in the care sector in Scotland at the moment the problem however is the fact is that 77% of those are in the home care sector that's predominantly in the private and the voluntary sector rather than the public sector where trade union density is much higher where there are partnership and other arrangements that's not to say that there's an anti-trade union act from all employers in the private and the voluntary sector quite the opposite we have recognition agreements with a lot of those areas obviously the ugly ones we don't the difficulty is in that sector that in years gone by home care workers would have come to a community base they would have had regular discussions, you could actually meet your members you could organise etc now particularly in the private and the voluntary sector people go straight from their home to their first place of work in the trade union perspective that makes it a challenging organising task to do that particularly when the employer might not be encouraging you I mean literally we have sent organisers into local supermarkets to recruit home care workers because a lot of them that's where you actually see more of them you can see the uniforms so I mean I've done it myself I've literally engaged with workers in those settings but it's an organising model this is not easy but the issue I think is we need to think in terms of public service reform about how we join up some of these services because in the old days a home care worker if you saw mrs. McGuffey wasn't well would go back to the base and would probably pop into the GP or say to the senior social worker mrs. McGuffey is not looking very well I think someone ought to go and see him the social worker or even the GP it doesn't happen now because there's no feedback of that nature we argue we should be reinventing a sort of hub system in real communities to start to get some of that informal soft power guidance in there so it's about public service how we organise them as well as the quality and the issue for individual workers Thank you convener I think given your exchange with Liz Cairns at the beginning it might be worth mentioning something which time was against me last week on from the Scottish Government's economic strategy the March update showing that from 97 98 through to 2010 11 the share in total income amongst taxpayers in Scotland saw a huge benefit for the top 1% only the top 17% saw any significant benefit and most of the rest of the population has seen a decline in their overall share of the national income that's going to them and I think the richest 1% of taxpayers and nearly 7% of total pre-tax income at the start of that period it risen to 8% by 2010 11 meaning that that 1% of taxpayers had an income greater than the bottom 20% put together and that's pre-tax income so it's before those more recent years when very wealthy high paid individuals will have had a high paid tax cut from the UK Chancellor so I think it's worth just reflecting on those figures given that earlier exchange I suspect that both Unison and Unite will agree with the basic proposition that a higher level of union membership globally that there's good evidence to show that it results in flatter wage ratios in a range of better employment practices so rather than just asking whether you agree with that I'd like to ask what do you think is realistic in terms of Scotland taking action to achieve a higher level of union membership as well as good relationships between employers and trade unions is it realistic to get back to a period of high unionisation and if so what can the Scottish government do without the power to regulate the employment market to try and help to achieve that The Scottish government may not regulate the market but there are sectors where I think we could do some of the things that Chris and others have talked about which is for example there's a lot of Scottish government money and the convener mentioned it in terms of the need to put that money in the care sector if you look at for example at the residential care sector in Scotland there is a national right for the residential care sector but the Scottish government cozzler and engagement of the employers there we don't have an equivalent rate it's left to individual authorities and the home care sector but my view is and increasingly I have to say the view of a lot of employers in that sector is that we ought to have perhaps a national rate in that sector as well if you do that it seems to me you've got the basis of sectoral bargaining for that sector the type that Chris was talking about is what you've got is a tripartite arrangement whereby this is largely funded out of the public purse and it's the Scottish government's public purse at the end of it which does that there are agreements around that and it seems to me you could tie that in to a range of of employment and wage issues and I agree with John McGurk from CIPD that I think that would include a wider bargaining agenda so sectoral bargaining and collective bargaining at the end of the day is the thing that we look from all the academic studies across the world that drives this but collective bargaining particularly when you've got some of the more ugly end and some of the more difficult to organise areas than sectoral bargaining will I think give a kick in the right direction and I think certainly in the care sector which is 7% or 8% of the Scottish workforce so this is not insignificant would be a good model for taking that forward I'm sure there are others in the private sector which I'm probably less familiar with than Liz will be more familiar with but certainly in that sector that will be a very practical way of taking it forward sector by sector approach not a big bang that's particularly starting with those where the public sector money is going in there and can leverage I wonder if Liz Cairns would like to comment on the wider economy and how we engage with this beyond the public sector Obviously Unite having membership in 23 industrial sectors is able to have a unique position into this and we would certainly support a move to sectoral bargaining and obviously putting in place national agreements where we can possibly get those agreed however one of the issues I would be mindful of is the situation which we're increasingly seeing where national agreements are being ridden roughshod over in regards to specific issues in particular in the construction industry where Unite has a national agreement in place which is being bypassed with an organisation that's subcontracted mechanical and engineering work to a Danish organisation and Unite in that situation had also negotiated with the employer a 10 per cent apprenticeship target which has now been basically ripped up so despite us wishing to move to sectoral bargaining which is certainly something we would want to see we need to ensure that national agreements are maintained and abided by in particular rather than being in place but not being adhered to I mean it does seem to me there's a huge barrier as well in relation to some of the more exploitative ends of the labour market that we've heard from particularly in the retail sector and in hospitality catering and so on where the level of union membership is so low that the question about the relationship between unionism and employers simply doesn't arise how do we resolve that how do we culturally change the expectations and give people who may be on zero hours contracts a reason to think being a member of a union is a worthwhile thing to do I think we need to move to a situation where rather than opt for zero hour contracts we're actually pursuing we're pursuing permanent direct employment I think that when you have that ability you're employed on a permanent basis directly with your employer you've got the ability to if a situation arises take cases to employment tribunal you've got the ability to challenge your employer more so than you have if you're employed as an agency worker or employed in a zero hours contract those precarious types of employment don't also allow the ability for people to challenge some of the behaviours that come out of precarious work I wanted to come on to employment tribunals as well with Citizens Advice Scotland is this appropriate now? OK I wonder if I can turn to Rob Gowns then the case that your written submission makes against employment tribunal fees to me is a very strong case and the arguments against it are are clear there's a commitment from the Scottish Government to abolish those fees as and when the powers are formally devolved do you have any understanding of where we're at with that when we can expect that to happen and also whether there's any clarity yet about whether employees south of the border will retain as they may at the moment the ability to access an employment tribunal in Scotland if their employer operates in Scotland do we know whether that jurisdictional issue is still going to be relevant and can that become a case for the UK Government to change its position once the Scottish Government has? Certainly from what I understand there's still jurisdictional issues to be worked out in terms of what would be a Scottish case and therefore eligible to go to a Scottish employment tribunal I mean in terms of the Scottish Government's commitment we really welcome that that's something that we've done in a number of years that employment tribunal should be abolished and it's basically diminished the amount of cases that have got to employment tribunal by 80% I mean in terms of when when the powers will be will be transferred 2017's got the I've got my head although I can find out what the latest state of play is I mean in terms of moving towards it I would hope that that it would be a sort of positive sign south of the border I know that the the Ministry of Justice is looking into down there and reviewing fees in the whole system and whether it's done what was intended and I think would be interested to see the sort of two systems side by side one of the most important things for us would be that people who have had their their rights infringed at work would have access to justice one thing that I think we we can do better on in Scotland that I think we would have the power to do just now is to improve the rate of pay out of awards at the moment something like 41% of people who win the case at tribunal don't receive any of the the money that's due to them around half don't receive their award in full I think there's stuff that that we can do around that the rate in England is slightly better although not brilliant and I think there's some things we can do around ensure that that people are able to pursue the employer and they've got the support of the sheriff officer system to do that because we've seen people where they've been awarded £10,000 or more and their employers their ex-employers vanished off into the thin air or in some cases where they know perfectly well where their ex-employer is but they they aren't able to pursue them for the money so I think there's something in there that we can that we can get on to and assuming that sometime hopefully early into the next parliament tribunal fees are abolished do there remain other barriers to people accessing justice in these situations which we still need to address I'm thinking of areas like enforcement capacity even if existing legislation is whether it's devolved or reserved if the enforcement is happening locally but the capacity isn't there other barriers that we need to address there I think there's a range of things around enforcement of the national minimum wage enforcement of making sure that I've been down on bogus self-employment where employers don't pay their employees tax and national insurance and in some cases that's not clear to the the employee for a number of years there was a case we saw recently where someone got a letter from HMRC to say that they didn't pay their taxes three years ago which was the first that they knew that they were self-employed so I think there's plenty that can be done a lot of the cases that we see of board practice aware are technically illegal but there's very little that that the employee can do to challenge that whether it's fear that they'll be disadvantaged whether they haven't been in post for two years or whether they can't afford the tribunal fee the fees will go but I think there's still a lot more that can be done in terms of proactively enforcing what's basically basic employment employment rights that are already enshrined in law thank you Richard Lyle can I turn to Rob Goins Dave and Liz may want to come in but basically first of all can I compliment the citizens advice bureau for the work that you do and the many constituents you've helped over the years that I know personally know of a couple of weeks ago we had Denise Horsfall from the department directorate of work and pensions and she went on about the flexibility of universal credit and amongst the examples you've given some glaring shocking examples you are in full time employment earning £7 an hour one lady in east of Scotland works 35 hours a week finding it difficult to manage her rent council tax, other essentials the client has council tax ideas and then you go on to severe inward poverty and other examples which are totally shocking but you also within your submission you have listed what you believe that you should be talking to the UK government not us Denise Horsfall said that flexible universal credit would compensate when people were in a situation of not getting a lot of work or whatever which I had disputed and I've yet to be proved it used to be proved right but you've come on to say that you remove employment tribunal fees which already has been coloured increase your efforts to enforce national minimum wage review support by current tax credits I think the one where really it comes in is the strategic approach should be taken across government to ensure that it rises national minimum wage and changes to the tax and benefits systems are complementary with the aim of ensuring that workers are better off and do not face inward poverty all the points that you've put forward what discussions have you had with the UK government and what choices have you put on them to try and see how we can resolve some of these problems that we have? We certainly have a lot of discussions with the Department for Work and Pensions at all levels to basically improve the system for the clients we see that have a range of a range of issues working within the benefit system which is the biggest area of advice that we give in terms of the of tax credits I was through that submission yesterday and I realised it was written before the summer budget where there have been some changes made and I think the rise in the national minimum wage is welcome the cuts to the tax credits are concerning previous restrictions on eligibility in 2012 and that there was reduced support in terms of the flexibilities around universal credit doing quite a bit of work to assess what the early evidences of universal credit and work the DWP to try and flag up early issues that are emerging in relation to things that happen when it's tested there will be a certain amount of flexibility within universal credit but it's not a huge amount of money and it also there's some flip sides to that as well for instance at the moment you're not a person is not supposed to be sanctioned for turning down a zero as contract because there's not enough hours on it now some of the indications from the DWP have been because universal credit is integrated in and out of work benefit that will all be fine within the benefit system you won't have the problems so people might be expected to take up work on a zero as contract but it doesn't suit them on pain of sanction now that's we will be quite concerned about both in terms of because of the problems we've seen with clients being sanctioned but also the misuse of zero as contracts that's both that have led hardship for clients and also caused great difficulties in practically being able to enforce their rights at work so yes we discuss things with them do these people realise that if you're going from week to week and your hours are changing you really could be down the office every week filling out a form and it ain't one single form it's like war and peace you're signing 20 pages or whatever and you can't do it online because people in poverty don't have a computer so do you agree with me that the system is still fraught with so many following time wasting situation where we really need to get to grips to try and improve it for people who unfortunately are in that situation yeah I think there's a lot a lot of issues with the in-work benefits system and particularly on flexible work and issues where people's hours change at the moment we've got benefits job seekers allowance and working tax credits where at one point you're eligible for one working up to a certain amount of hours and work tax credits another where in practice people might be eligible for one one week and one the next and in practice they don't claim they don't claim either I think that that may be one of the qualities of universal credit there's still a range of a range of issues that I think it would be ironed out with that but it's in practice certainly until for the next while I think we'll continue to see clients who are in work who are struggling to pay for essentials and aren't able to access support from the in-work benefits system and just the last question that makes sound so far off the wall shouldn't we not have rather than a minimum wage have a weekly national income for people that sounds really off the wall I think it's an interesting idea and I think there's quite a bit that can be done in terms of when wages rise when there are changes to the benefits system and changes to the tax system to make sure that they're integrated the Joseph Rowntree Foundation does a great amount of stuff on the minimum income standard so I think there's a lot of stuff in there and the reason I asked that or just finished off convener was that in one year's submissions you've got a lady who's earning £255 a week which basically her income is £245 a week she's struggling she's struggling which her income really is under £13,000 and that's where okay I know the Scottish medium wage comes in but thank you very much Can I just add on the it's not that off the wall so you're not too much territory since the income of course there are those who argue that as an approach I think in relation to I think firstly it's important to understand that more than half of those on benefits are actually in work so the skyvers and the strivers narrative that has been pushed is actually just factually wrong so I think that that needs to be challenged the tax credit changes are a big concern to us we've done some work for our own members in calculating the differences there and I know colleagues in Osdall have done a little low pay area in the retail sector have done some similar work around that and I think it's not well understood that frankly even if we've got wages up to living wage level we would still need the benefits system to kick in and the reason for that is that it's about families yes if we get wages up single people in particular those without families that will probably solve the problem for them and I think that's our project action group a few months ago which we talked about the working poor and we explain this interaction between the two and I think that's very important on universal credit I think our concern is that in principle universal credit is a great idea and there are papers in UK the equivalents of DWP that civil terms are written for government after government saying this would be a good idea in principle the problem is the practical delivery of it the compute the systems to do this are absolutely horrendous and we've had some members who've transferred out of local government into the fraud staff for example have gone from local government into the DWP so I've seen some of this it's not our organising area but the first time I've seen some of it and you really do have to wonder if this is ever going to be doable in terms of delivering the massive complexity particularly in areas like ZROs contraband wages go up and down I've just simply not convinced it's going to happen and I'll add another one the next problem is that of course they want to add housing benefit take that away from local government stick that into universal credit your inboxes are going to be buzzing and local councils as well with the complexity and the problems that's going to create as well something we feel that housing benefit because it's closely tied to housing issues that should stay out of universal credit and remain as a local government function Good morning a couple of comments to begin with first of all no one would disavow the current better practices and the situation for employees is down to historically what the trade unions have achieved and also second comment is I think as unison says in their report the Fair Work Convention has done that is doing a good job but I want to go beyond that I wonder if we are really moving with the times when we talked about job quality this morning and if we relate that to wages and income I would suggest that there also has to be a significant change not in, sorry I used this earlier on but a change of engagement and guidance shall I put that in inverted commas for the bad and the ugly but also the trade unions wouldn't be better if we had at a local level the German system where there is involvement of the employees in decision making in equity participation and by the way in the public sector that can be done by having a process of committed costs I'm wondering to secure the job quality involvement participation of employees at the work level I'd show you my favourite infographic which says remind you that trade unions the people who brought you the weekend and much else besides so I'll take us red my sales pitch for the wonders of the trade union movement we've achieved a lot we ain't perfect but we have achieved a lot the evidence shows even in the flexible labour market that the CBI and others would like to see that we still achieve higher wages and better terms of conditions in unionised workplaces than we do in others by some significant jump as well I think your question however is legitimate and also the Patrick's point about what incentives can be there to create that I think there are very good models and I think the Working Together report was excellent in that it did probably its greatest value was to pull out some of the best practice in Scotland on this issue and I know it's been this almost personal drive gym made this for years to pursue some of these issues but I think he did enable us to pull out both in the public and the private sector some of those examples and I think if you look at for example I was seconded into the Scottish Government to implement the partnership agreement in the NHS so I spent two years at St Andrew's house introducing that system and now it's been given ratings by academics and not university is probably the most ambitious example of worker engagement in Europe and it's had real advantages and some of the managers I have to say at that time were very against it they liked the traditional model they decided then they chucked at us and we shouted back at them and that's the way it worked the model whereby there's an early engagement in work design and not just about paying conditions but the broader issues ensures actually in many I could give you examples where I said Ashley Dave you're right we've made changes that we could not have made in the old system you'd spent two years fighting them but because you were engaged at the start the staff themselves were the ones that changed they were involved in the design I can point to control rooms for example that have been designed by the workers not by somebody sitting in a desk at headquarters and they knew how to design it and they just got a bit of help to do it so I think there's that I think if we want to know how we'd stop some of that people say oh well trade unions don't and John McGurth mentioned it remember for example that even in difficult to organise areas statutory recognition only covers the basics only covers wages bargaining it doesn't include the ability to bargain about training about work organisation all of those issues so I think the way forward and the public sector to do that is certainly the partnership approach and bringing that down to a local level as to how you would organise services in particular area and free up some more self managed you may that would wax lyrical to you about an unpronounceable Dutch system which I can never pronounce I won't even try not one of the poor reporters will never cope with my pronunciation but essentially it's about some element of self management the Dutch model is different for a variety of reasons but we could adapt some of that to a degree of self management which I think frees up the innovation that Chris Warhurst talked about so in traditional management terms you've got to sort out what are called hygiene factors in the word you've got to get paying conditions right you start to deal with the quality issues which ensure that you get that type of innovation now you know there are private sector examples of that there are cooperative models of course the work on that basis but I do think that's an industrial relations model which Scotland because of its scale could help to develop which might be more difficult elsewhere in the UK I think that's helpful but the question is very simple Dave was what is the role of the trade unions if we have more employee participation at the work level I'm not disavowing the issue of sectoral bargaining or what have you what do you see the role given that things move on some people don't like to do that and some people like to resist change but change is a constant so what do you see the role of the trade unions being in organising in terms of the work level particularly when I was looking at what is good work what is bad work some of the stuff coming up was less autonomy less control over the working day and importantly a little opportunity for a voice in the workplace I absolutely believe that we need to engage at a very local level with the trade unions and the workers however when you've got increasing reluctance to allow time off with regard to facility time to engage with the workforce through your trade union rep the facility time and across the private sector as well as understanding the public sector is being diminished previously when you had perhaps an agreement for say four hours but with a wee bit of flexibility the flexibility's gone and it's now down you've got your four hours and do not go beyond that where we used to have the opportunity four reps in a workplace that's been cut to two reps you know there's increasingly a move by employers or these ugly employers that Dave keeps referring to to to these are all hanging around just to undermine yet it's a very simple question have you ever worked council elected by people in the workplace whether that's in the private or the public sector whether they negotiate time or time off or the facilities that they work and they have a say in that what is the role for the trade union at the workplace what we do in those circumstances is we we essentially provide support in terms of training for those people so they can just sticking somebody around a table doesn't ensure they can participate so a key role of there is training stewards and representatives to ensure that they can participate another one is ensuring that we disseminate best practice that we which we do we identify briefings saying look this is working in here let's carry that out that's carrying out there those are the sort of practical things that trade unions do but of course they also provide the basic building block of basic protection so that you know if you're an individual stuck in a non-unionised you're reluctant to actually pitch in at that level and the thing about trade unions is that you know with the statutory and the muscle of a trade union we don't have a problem chasing money or taking cases because we pay for those so we provide that basic level of support particularly for the elderly employers they might be too keen can I just say I hope I fell into the category of the good in terms of employers had equity participation they did not need somebody to teach them what to do around the table and they were engaged fully when we went in they were doing £1.4 million revenue and losing £280,000 a year and no pension fund they now with me not being involved are doing over £5 million revenue they're making £480,000 profit and the employees are certainly benefitting both in terms of their long-term pension and say in the workplace and I can give you an old string of other examples which would demonstrate where that added value has been provided but I can also give you examples of where the employers particularly where there have been change of employers in some of those areas where in fact those works council arrangements essentially have been collapsed or ignored because the new employer was one of Chris's worst one or your ugly ones so by the ugly no it was actually probably as Chick keeps reminding as we've maybe not answered the question but it was more to do with something that Unite was involved in in the workplace and I don't know whether you would have picked up it in your workplace when you were there but Unite organised mental health training for its reps and shop stewards which the rep then took into the workplace that mental health training allowed workers to identify people who may need support additional support mental health issues with regards to the stress and precarious work is one of these areas where particularly it does cause a lot of stress and anxiety for people not knowing how much they're going to have from week to week not knowing how many hours they're going to have from week to week how they're going to put food on the table for their families so these kind of stresses do create psychological issues which can lead to sickness, absence etc so Unite put in place mental health training which allowed the reps in the workplace to identify people who perhaps needed support but also to guide employers to be more supportive in that kind of environment rather than always say that's them off again to think about so I don't know whether a staff association with regards to specific trade union things we have got the ability with regards to the resources through things like Union Learning Fund to put in place this kind of training that might not be taken up by other organisations Professor Clare Rambra and NHS Scotland have talked in evidence about the positive impact that trade unions have on the health and wellbeing of workforces and with regard to the Jim Mather report working together the Scottish Government stated quite clearly that trade unions are key partners in the social and economic aspects of moving forward in respect of those two things then and we heard from the Fair Work Convention that they are in listening mode what are you going to be taking to the Fair Work Convention? Obviously we made submissions to the working together report and we've identified a number of areas I think obviously from the Fair Work Convention's point of view what we're looking for in the early stages is never to be a slightly process driven in terms of getting some of the new processes in place ensuring that for example in the public sector that there are essentially the NHS model is spread more widely so it's about taking what's recognised as best practice and getting that more broadly so what we're looking there for is some encouragement in those areas we would hope the Fair Work Convention for example would essentially champion what is best in the Scottish Industrial Relations cultures described in the working together report I think that's particularly important when the UK Government essentially is trying to do new to trade unions through a trade union bill and we would hope that the Fair Work Convention would be one of those mechanisms by which the CIPD and others have identified they think it's an outmoded approach yourself as a partner absolutely yes because the Scottish Government is taking quite clearly that you're very key in terms of that economic and social partnership one I'm trying to get is obviously the Fair Work Convention is taking in the listening mode at the moment and you're absolutely right but I'm just trying to establish do you see yourself as a partner and if so are you going to be reflecting on a lot of the positive aspects that we've heard from Professor Clare Bambra and NHS Scotland in terms of the impact that trade unions have on the workforce in terms of health and wellbeing absolutely we welcome the report one of our people on the fair work our convener is a member of the fair work convention we see very much of ourselves as a partner in there we bought into those processes in a range of industries and we see merit in developing that as a Scotland wide area we included for example some of the evidence that Clare and others have put as examples of the things that we have done and we'd like to see that best practice spread using the fair work convention our comments were obviously we're very pleased and delighted to be involved in the fair work convention and our deputy regional secretary sits on the fair work convention and one of the things we're looking to do is obviously again collect a bargain and looking at developing that tightening that up but also trying to strengthen some of the guidance you mentioned in the listening mode it would be good to be in action mode because within Unite we're concerned about things like the guidance on blacklisting where the guidance makes very straight claims about what it will not do however our experience is that the guidance is actually in many ways ineffectual so it's about strengthening these it's ineffectual because despite the fact that we have known blacklisting companies I took a snapshot of contracts awarded from the date that the blacklisting guidance would come into force in November 2013 to December 2014 and there was around 16 contracts issued to known blacklisting companies who have not taken remedial action and that the budget for those particular procurement contracts was £800 million so despite guidance being there we're looking to strengthen these because we can't say one thing in listening mode if in action we're not dealing with it in the action so really it's very much a partner but equally a partner who's going to be a bit more forceful and they're saying they'll be coming up with a report they need to be in listening mode prior to the fact that they can take action on areas like you've suggested Gordon MacDonald I was wanting to ask you about the Scottish Business Pledge launched earlier this year by the Scottish Government and obviously there are a number of parts to that pledge which covers payment to 11 wage removal of exploited of zero hour contracts workforce engagement investing in youth etc and I was just wondering what your views were about the Scottish Business Pledge and do you think it's a useful tool and we've talked a lot this morning about good and bad employers it's a useful tool in identifying good employers why do we encourage more employers to sign up to it? I think we welcome the business pledge I think it's another example of spreading good practice if there was a silver bullet for this then I'm sure someone would have dreamt it up and there isn't so essentially what you've got to do is try and reach people in a number of different ways the Scottish Living Wage campaign which I'm on the executive that we've been working for years using that model we see the business pledge as being complementary it's not seeking that in every area but it's at least spreading good practice and I think the business pledge if it's got an advantage living wage is very narrowly about wages I've talked today about procurement about being wider than wages and I think the business pledge hopefully and the work of the Fair Work Convention will be about spreading those wider areas for example John McGurth this morning talked about zero hours contracts is their analysis of zero hours contracts for example in the care sector if you look at the statistics it said only 10% are on zero hours contracts because they say 80% are on permanent contracts the trouble is if you ask employer is someone on a permanent contract if they've got a contract for 15 hours a week but they're actually working 30 hours a week they have a permanent contract doesn't mean that they're on a form of zero hours contract they're on what we call a notional hours contract it doesn't give it all the weakness not all the weaknesses but a lot of the weaknesses that Chris Warhur described this morning are there so the use of zero hour contracts and notional nominal hour contracts is actually more pervasive in Scotland than we think it is because the statistics are not showing that up so what we want to do is to use things like business pledge Fair Work Convention and other initiatives to essentially spread better practice explain that quality jobs actually have a business case for it it's how we sold the living wage lots of employers came to the living wage who weren't convinced of the outset but were convinced by the business case for it, I think we're next stages of business pledge and others is about making the business case for quality work in Scotland I agree with Dave on that certainly support of Scottish business pledge although have some doubts about its ability to really really change the Scottish economy in any meaningful way signing up to things never really works at the volunteer route for many things seems to be a route that leaves those particularly ugly employers as we keep talking about off the hook I think though we have to have a multi-prong approach to some of this and I think that we'll pull them out I did put in my paper that we've got 332,720 small and medium size enterprises in Scotland and I think to think that we're going to get them even a small proportion of that signed up to Scottish business pledge it would be difficult people do sign up to things to get the kite mark but we all can find ways around it but certainly I don't think it's doing any harm just on that point you made you did say that in your written submission that you 332,720 SMEs but you also highlighted that they provide 1.1 million jobs which is 3.3 jobs per employer so is it a case of possibly these small enterprises think that things like the Scottish business pledge doesn't apply to them or being registered in a living wage foundation doesn't apply to them but you think it's maybe a target that larger employers I would probably although those figures are very stark there when you mention them like that there's a number of very very good small employers out there who's probably paying more than the living wage paying treating their staff very well and changing conditions I get your point Just to follow up one of the things I think we're most pleased to see about the business pledge was the inclusion of around exploitive zero hours contracts as they said they cause a massive problem for our clients I think there's probably work that can be done and may need to be done by the business pledge in terms of defining precisely what that is because it's not necessarily so much a problem with the contracts themselves and I think this is where some of the learning comes in it's the way in which they've been used so if it's been used to essentially deny employees their rights if it's been used to change the shift patterns or if it's a situation where they would prefer more standard part-time or full-time contract then then that would that would be nice as misuse I think that there's probably other things that could be added to it but echo what the other the other panellists have said that it's welcome to broadening out beyond the living wage which is also welcome and hopefully more businesses will sign up to it and it'll improve standards A statement of good intentions is always welcome but does there need to be some conditionality around signing up to the business pledge that actually says we promise to do this and we will be held to account for it I rather like Chris Waters break down in terms of what you do for the different groups for the ugly, frankly, it has to be regulation and enforcement and I think Rob's made the point and we made the point many, many times that having rights having plaques on the wall is great but if there's nobody going around checking enforcing now the living wage has taken off in the bigger way we're finding far more cases now living wage committee where people are challenging organisations that have signed up to the living wage and then my staff see adverts for jobs these companies advertising jobs at less than the living wage and people need to be challenged on that and that is a problem for us, particularly the national minimum wage in particular, it's a tiny unit in HMRC that are supposed to enforce the national minimum wage I mean really it is absolutely hopeless for those groups I think you've got to have regulation enforcement I think for the indifferent group as Chris was putting it there I think that's where the business pledge and others come in handy because what we can do we can pass lots of laws and the rest of it but what is important is about making cultural change and I think what was noticeable to me that when we introduced partnership work and health service elsewhere yes, I came along and said the government says you must do X but actually it took years before we changed trade union cultures as well which a chickle like but in terms of it changes trade union because the biggest challenge for a lot of shops is suddenly these managers who they've been calling all the names under the sun for donkey's years suddenly they've got to get into team work and they've got to make decisions they've got to get into early decisions they needed a lot of support and help to get through that as well cultural approaches as well so things like the business pledge and others can help change behaviours in the workplace but legislation underpins that drink driving, all the smoking all of these things never cured the problem in themselves but they helped to drive cultural change and I think pledges and others are helpful in doing that Can I just follow up one point based on what Rob Gowens just said about zero virus contracts that businesses should not use exploitative zero virus contracts when Scottish Enterprise came to the committee I think two weeks ago and we asked them what is your definition of that term they were unable to give us one which rather begs the question if the government's enterprise agency can't tell us what that term means how is business supposed to know can you offer any any suggestions how you would define an exploitative zero virus contract sorry I mean we had a go at it when the term popped up in the public procurement regulations we would suggest that where a worker would prefer a more secure part-time or full-time contract if it causes hardship to individuals due to regularly changing patterns of work if it denies individuals basic employee rights if it acts as a determinant to workers inserting their basic employment rights and if an exclusivity clause is used although this is now banned and I think that that would certainly cover off a lot of the issues that we see without saying if you want to you can zero virus contracts but don't use them in this way because that's misuse there was a private member's bill in Westminster which made a similar definition there and put in processes which were important for people to be able to challenge them so I think those would all be helpful but do you think we need a definition yes absolutely okay last brief point now last few seconds and no one has asked you this question are employers nationally or locally better or worse employing people in the last than 20 30 40 years ago I think that's very difficult so I rather falling in Chris's point that we have a tendency to look with rose tinted spectacles what happened in years gone by as a trade union official of some 30 o