UK unions are using the government’s Employment Rights Act to help recruit and organise tech workers.
A new route into tech
Meta – owner of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads and Messenger – has reached an agreement with the Prospect union granting it access to employees to discuss trade union membership directly. This has been widely covered in the media and across tech industry websites.
The 2025 Employment Rights Act provides the legal right for trade unions to approach an employer for access to its workforce. If a company refuses access, the union can complain to the government’s Central Arbitration Committee, which can order access and potentially fine the company if it fails to comply.
Prospect has over 160,000 members in engineering, aerospace, defence, and white-collar work, as well as tech workers. Under the voluntary agreement, Prospect will now have access to Meta’s 5,000 UK staff and be able to talk to them directly about the benefits of trade union membership and recruit them into the union.
A test for unions and employees
The agreement will give unions an early indication of how the new right of access works in practice.
There are concerns about the access clauses in the law from the Campaign For Trade Union Freedom and the Institute of Employment Rights. They have called for the legislation to be amended so that unions have a right of access without first needing to negotiate an access agreement, and for unions to be able to seek a high court injunction where employers interfere with that right, saying: “The process is cumbersome, legalistic, and invites delaying litigation by un-cooperative employers.”
Prospect, which already has members at Meta, welcomed the company’s decision to agree to voluntary access ahead of the legislation coming into full effect.
Prospect General Secretary Mike Clancy said the agreement would give the union an opportunity to make the case for union membership to Meta workers and build on its existing membership at the company.
Meta said Prospect had approached the company earlier in the year and that its London sites now had a voluntary access agreement in place. Employees who wanted to find out more about union membership would have a straightforward way to do so, it said. The company’s industrial relations team already works with employee representative groups in other markets, Meta added.
Winning over a new generation
Trade unions with members in the digitech and AI sector, including Unite, the Communication Workers Union, the App Drivers and Couriers Union and the Independent Workers of Great Britain, will be watching closely how Prospect uses the agreement with Meta, how they pitch to a largely younger workforce (most of whom have no experience of unions themselves or among their families and friends), how workers respond at access meetings and how many Meta workers actually join the union.
The experience of other unions shows why the Meta agreement is significant.
The Independent Workers of Great Britain are in the midst of an ongoing, complex legal battle with the video gaming company Rockstar, who the union say are using anti-union tactics and blacklisting to stop the IWGB gaining enough members to bring a case for union rights at work under existing laws.
Rights in the platform economy
The government’s approach to employment rights is also being tested in the platform economy. It has ruled that private-hire drivers, such as those working for Uber and other ride-hailing and courier companies, are classified as workers and are entitled to the national minimum wage and paid annual leave regardless of how a platform calculates their pay,
In a letter dated 1 September, Kate Dearden MP, the minister of state for the future of work, said employers must meet those obligations “regardless of the business model they use or whether pay is calculated through dynamic, algorithmic or platform-based systems”.
Dearden added that HMRC and the Fair Work Agency “will not hesitate to take action where breaches occur“.
ADCU General Secretary Cristina-Georgiana Ioanitescu had written to Dearden about private-hire working conditions and the government’s planned employment status consultation.
“Bogus self-employment is unacceptable”, Dearden wrote. “Employers should never seek to deny people their employment rights and avoid their own legal obligations by claiming someone is self-employed when in reality they are not.”
The letter acknowledges the supreme court’s 2021 ruling on Uber drivers’ worker status. That judgment upheld findings that the drivers who brought the case were workers for the purposes of employment rights law.
The government plans to consult on employment status “in due course”, Dearden said. She described the aim as addressing weaknesses in the framework that can leave vulnerable workers, including some in the platform economy, without core protections.
The government’s position has been welcomed by the ADCU, which has been campaigning over the employment status and working conditions of private-hire drivers.
Ioanitescu said the government had made clear that worker rights applied regardless of the business model used by an employer. But she said the union would now expect the government to enforce those rights, accusing Uber of continuing to deny drivers worker status, the minimum wage and paid leave.
“We intend to take the Secretary of State at his word”, she said.
More from Tony Burke
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