Meta gives union access to recruit UK staff for first time

Meta has agreed to give a trade union direct access to its UK staff for the first time, in an early example of how unions plan to use new powers to build a presence in the tech sector.

The access agreement will allow the Prospect union to speak directly to the social media group’s 5,000 UK staff — face to face and through digital channels — about the benefits of belonging to a union, with a view to recruiting them.

“The UK’s tech sector is increasingly important to our economy, but historically its employees have had very little organised voice,” said Mike Clancy, Prospect’s general secretary.

The voluntary deal comes before the introduction next month of a new statutory right for unions to access workplaces — potentially one of the most far-reaching changes in the Labour government’s flagship reforms of employment rights.

This will allow unions to host weekly in-person meetings with employees during their paid working hours and to send messages to staff through internal communication channels.

Clancy told the FT last week that the new power was “the single most important thing” in the government’s workers’ rights legislation, as it would allow unions to rebuild their presence across the private sector after decades of decline in membership numbers.

Prospect, which represents about 160,000 UK workers, is targeting the tech sector — where unions have historically had little presence — for early access deals. Clancy argues this is important because workers need a strong voice in the development and deployment of AI.

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“Resisting technological change has never had successful outcomes . . . the best hope is collective agreements,” he said, adding: “Employers need this [a union presence too]. If the UK becomes the wild west of AI implementation, we’ll have the worst possible outcome.”

Prospect, which recently won collective bargaining rights at the flight search company Skyscanner, already has some members at Meta. Its goal is to recruit more than 10 per cent of Meta’s UK staff — crossing the threshold at which it can bid for collective bargaining rights.

Meta said the voluntary access agreement at its London sites would give employees a “straightforward way” to find out more about union membership. It added: “Meta’s industrial relations team already works with employee representative groups in multiple markets, and we are approaching this in the same way.”

Other unions are also fighting to build a presence in the tech sector as the industry’s own leading figures warn of the potential for AI to wreak havoc in labour markets.

The Communication Workers Union, better known for its long-running battles on behalf of postal workers, is fighting a contested bid to win recognition from DeepMind, Google’s AI wing, in order to negotiate over pay and working conditions for DeepMind’s staff in London.