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Tech firmsUTAWYour browser does not support the element. are known for the large salaries and ostentatious perks they bestow on workers: office slides, ball-pit meeting rooms and back massages. These companies tend to be less keen on the idea of employees joining a trade union. In Britain, however, they will soon have less choice in the matter.Cycles of mass redundancies in the industry mean that workers are warming to membership, according to John Chadfield, one of the founding members of United Tech and Allied Workers (), a branch of the Communications Workers Union. “People want job security rather than ping-pong tables.” The Labour government’s should make it easier for British tech employees, and their peers in other industries, to join up.The , which was introduced to Parliament on October 10th, proposes a raft of potentially radical reforms, including a wave of rights for all employees on the first day they are hired, enhanced sick-pay entitlements and a clampdown on zero-hours contracts. Stronger union rights are a big part of the bill. Under its provisions, employers would be required not only to inform new recruits of their right to join a union but to remind them of that right on a regular basis. Unions in turn would be granted more rights to enter workplaces and recruit members.The bill would also make it easier for unions to organise industrial action. It would scrap the need for at least 50% of those eligible to vote to cast their ballot, leaving only the requirement for a majority of votes cast to be in favour of striking. Where trade unions are now required to give employers at least 14 days’ notice of a walkout, in future they would be required to give only seven. The bill would also repeal laws that allow employers in health care and other selected industries to impose minimum-service levels during strikes.This would all be good news for the unions themselves. They have endured a protracted decline in membership, owing to fewer jobs in heavily unionised sectors such as manufacturing and a rise in self-employment and casual work. Around 13m British workers were members of a trade union in the 1970s; today there are 6.4m members, the lowest level in nearly three decades.It is too early to predict a new era of union militancy, not least because much of the bill is subject to consultation. But industries like technology, which have historically avoided unionised workforces, may have to get used to the idea of comrade coders.
