Wildcat strikes: what employers need to know

“There’s no respect and they work us like robots,” said an employ­ee at Ama­zon UK’s Swin­don ware­house, explain­ing his col­leagues’ deci­sion to down tools and stage a can­teen sit-in on 8 August. Angered by a pay deal offer­ing an increase of 35p per hour, among oth­er moves by the com­pa­ny, work­ers at sev­er­al of its oth­er depots around the coun­try soon fol­lowed suit.

What has set these dis­putes apart from the dozens of oth­ers that have occurred dur­ing the UK’s sum­mer of strikes is that, unlike rail­way staff, dock­ers and refuse col­lec­tors, the Ama­zon work­ers act­ed with­out the back­ing of a trade union. Sim­i­lar unof­fi­cial strikes have been break­ing out in work­places rang­ing from North Sea oil rigs to food fac­to­ries.

These stop­pages tend to be more spon­ta­neous and short-lived than those organ­ised by unions. Known as wild­cat strikes in cas­es where a work­force is unionised but work­ers take action with­out going through the approved pro­ce­dures, such acts are also ille­gal. Nonethe­less, they can still pose seri­ous prob­lems for employ­ers, dam­ag­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, morale and pub­lic rela­tions.

Com­pared with most oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries, the UK has seen few wild­cat strikes in recent years, but that may well change if the econ­o­my con­tin­ues to fal­ter as pre­dict­ed. That’s the view of Dr Manuela Galet­to, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor in employ­ment rela­tions at War­wick Busi­ness School.

“The cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis is ramp­ing up and there is cer­tain­ly dis­con­tent,” she says, sug­gest­ing that work­ers tak­ing unof­fi­cial action – which could cost them their jobs – may feel they have less to lose, giv­en that the recruit­ment mar­ket is gen­er­al­ly weight­ed in their favour. Near­ly half (47%) of UK employ­ers are strug­gling to fill vacan­cies, accord­ing to the lat­est research by the Char­tered Insti­tute of Per­son­nel Devel­op­ment (CIPD).

Anoth­er CIPD sur­vey has found that 53% of com­pa­nies think the coun­try is enter­ing a more unsta­ble peri­od of employ­ment rela­tions, while 42% expect to see increas­ing lev­els of indus­tri­al action over the next year. So how can employ­ers best man­age this height­ened risk?

Preparing for potential strikes

Adri­an Mar­tin is a part­ner at law firm Burges Salmon, where he leads the employ­ment team. His advice to employ­ers is to “do all you can to pre­vent wild­cat strikes from aris­ing. Try to main­tain as much engage­ment with your employ­ees as pos­si­ble.”

That should include being open about tough choic­es. For instance, if infla­tion-lag­ging pay offers are an issue, the man­age­ment may need to explain how infla­tion is affect­ing the busi­ness.

“If you’re offer­ing a cer­tain pay increase, explain why that’s the fig­ure you’ve cho­sen and why high­er amounts aren’t afford­able,” Mar­tin says. “Try to use neu­tral, non-emo­tive lan­guage and per­haps give some objec­tive exam­ples to illus­trate your points.”

Paul Atkin­son, an employ­ee rela­tions con­sul­tant who has worked in the oil and gas sec­tor for 30 years, advis­es busi­ness lead­ers to stay close­ly attuned to what’s hap­pen­ing on the front line. They should make reg­u­lar site vis­its and seek super­vi­sors’ views to antic­i­pate any poten­tial prob­lems.

“Be aware of what is hap­pen­ing with your work­force, espe­cial­ly on the shop floor,” he stress­es.

Mak­ing con­tin­gency plans for poten­tial indus­tri­al action is also vital. Many com­pa­nies with­out a his­to­ry of union­i­sa­tion tend to be rel­a­tive­ly unpre­pared for tough nego­ti­a­tions with dis­grun­tled work­ers. Some may not even have decid­ed which mem­bers of the man­age­ment team should take respon­si­bil­i­ty for such a task.

Atkin­son believes that it should be man­agers on the oper­a­tions side of the busi­ness rather than the HR func­tion, as the for­mer is clos­er to the heart of the enter­prise – and “some­times this is not about moth­er­hood and apple pie”.

These man­agers should be trained to nego­ti­ate, he says, adding: “You should always have plans ready. Even if they go out of the win­dow in the fog of war, at least you have a start­ing point.”

When wildcat strikes happen

Unionised employ­ees in a work­place who have gone through the cor­rect pro­ce­dures and bal­lot­ed suc­cess­ful­ly for a strike are grant­ed pro­tec­tions under UK law. For instance, although they don’t have to be paid for any hours they refuse to work, they can­not be dis­missed for with­draw­ing their labour.

This is not the case for non-organ­ised indus­tri­al action. In the­o­ry, that makes it eas­i­er for employ­ers to bring it to an end, includ­ing by ter­mi­nat­ing people’s con­tracts of employ­ment. But Mar­tin believes that such a “dras­tic step” is best avoid­ed.

“Think­ing about dis­missal should be very much a last resort. It’s not some­thing that should be done light­ly,” he warns. “The law relat­ing to indus­tri­al action is com­pli­cat­ed. If you’re doing any­thing detri­men­tal to an employ­ee in some way, you’ll need to think through the poten­tial con­se­quences care­ful­ly.”

Think­ing about dis­missal should be very much a last resort. It’s not some­thing that should be done light­ly

Dis­miss­ing some strik­ing work­ers but not oth­ers could lead to dis­crim­i­na­tion claims, for instance. Even threat­en­ing dis­missal is risky, Mar­tin notes, “because that will sim­ply make mat­ters more heat­ed instead of help­ing you to find a way for­ward”.

Atkin­son agrees, adding that employ­ers should con­sid­er not only the oper­a­tional impact of dis­miss­ing com­pe­tent work­ers, espe­cial­ly when skills may be in short sup­ply, but also how such a move would affect a firm’s rep­u­ta­tion.

“PR-wise, it can be a dis­as­ter,” he says. “A lot of the bat­tle these days plays out in the media.”

The wide­spread shar­ing on social media of videos shot by Ama­zon work­ers illus­trates Atkinson’s point. The com­pa­ny was forced to apol­o­gise after a man­ag­er at the Swin­don depot was caught on cam­era com­par­ing staff to “ani­mals”. Work­ers at oth­er ware­hous­es were inspired to walk out after watch­ing footage of ear­li­er Ama­zon protests on Tik­Tok, accord­ing to social­ist col­lec­tive Notes from Below.

The role of trade unions

When in doubt, man­age­ment should seek to involve any rel­e­vant union. Atkin­son cites his expe­ri­ence of deal­ing with a wild­cat stop­page involv­ing 1,500 peo­ple on an oil rig. Although the work­ers’ trade union was unaware of the action at first, it moved quick­ly to nego­ti­ate on their behalf and resolve the dis­pute when it found out.

This illus­trates how wild­cat strikes are a risk even in work­places with a strong union pres­ence. Slow-mov­ing strike bal­lot process­es, a fail­ure to reach a vote thresh­old or a sud­den change in con­di­tions can prompt rank-and-file mem­bers to take mat­ters into their own hands.

Although many com­pa­nies – includ­ing Ama­zon UK – have cam­paigned strong­ly against union­i­sa­tion in their work­places, Atkin­son believes that unions can be help­ful to employ­ers.

“It can delay some process­es, but at least there is some­one expe­ri­enced whom you can nego­ti­ate with if there’s indus­tri­al action, rather than peo­ple who think you’ll just roll over and give them what they want,” he says.

For her part, Galet­to has observed “a bit of rhetoric around how unions can be scary, con­fronta­tion­al and adver­sar­i­al. In my expe­ri­ence, they can be good allies in solv­ing prob­lems for the employ­ees, espe­cial­ly when it comes to col­lec­tive demands.”

Despite these ben­e­fits for staff and employ­ers, union mem­ber­ship has been falling steadi­ly in the UK since the 1920s. As the econ­o­my con­tin­ues to strug­gle, more and more work­ers may feel that unof­fi­cial strike action is the only way to secure a pay rise that will keep pace with infla­tion. A return to the mass walk­outs of the 1970s may be unlike­ly, but it’s clear that employ­ers can no longer be com­pla­cent about the risk of indus­tri­al unrest in the work­place.

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