Ending Precarious Work at the British Red Cross

Mike Adamson, Chief Executive of the British Red Cross

Precarious work is widespread at the British Red Cross. Many staff are employed on fixed term contracts, and casual staff on zero-hours contracts.

Their use has wide reaching impacts for staff. As well as making our lives precarious, it prevents us from accessing mortgages, loans and suitable housing and it even excludes us from a range of opportunities within the British Red Cross, such as secondment, apprenticeship and sabbatical opportunities, as well as BRC-funded external learning and development opportunities.

Staff on ‘zero-hours’ or ‘casual’ contracts are further impacted: they don’t have basic employment rights such as sick pay, even if they have worked at the British Red Cross for a number of years. Throughout the pandemic, many of these workers have contracted covid at work, and yet have been unable to take paid leave whilst they were in isolation, leaving them without an income.

The use of these precarious contracts impacts staff on permanent contracts too, as they create high turnover and instability within teams.

We want to see an end to these precarious contracts, and changes that create greater security and stability for all workers at British Red Cross. Ultimately these changes will allow us to deliver the stable and well resourced services that our service-users deserve.

BRC union members, who are part of the IWGB union Charity Workers’ Branch, invite all BRC workers to sign the petition below. Once we have gathered at least 200 names, we will submit the petition to BRC Management with the names listed.

To: Mike Adamson, Chief Executive of the British Red Cross
From: [Your Name]

At the British Red Cross the practice of issuing Fixed Term Contracts (FTCs) is widespread and heavily relied upon across the whole organisation. A significant number of British Red Cross staff are in precarious working conditions.

While the recent guidance on FTCs published in March 2022 states it seeks “to ensure that fixed-term contracts are used only where appropriate and where there is a genuine and objective reasoning to do so”, there are a large number of workers who will not (and cannot) benefit from this guidance, and will not be provided with any higher level of protection and security from it.

A clear example of this are many front-line services which rely heavily on restricted funding, such as the Family Reunion Integration Service, or Refugee Support Services. In these services, a large number of workers are employed on a temporary basis, with no guarantee that their contract will be extended, and often with no adequate notice of contract termination or extension. FTCs are being renewed on an ad-hoc basis, and very often extensions are only a few weeks or months long.

This uncertainty and continued state of precarity impacts us workers in many ways; it hinders our sense of security and affects our wellbeing; it prevents us from accessing mortgages, loans and suitable housing; it even excludes us from a range of opportunities within the British Red Cross, such as secondment, apprenticeship and sabbatical opportunities, as well as BRC-funded external learning and development opportunities.

In some cases fixed term contracts impact workers if it means they are not considered to have continuous service due to a short period in between BRC jobs.

It also impacts service delivery, creates risk for service users, and ultimately increases organisational costs, as the constant turnover of staff (often ‘unhappy leavers’), means overworked, understaffed services which cannot cope with the demand. Prior to this, there have only been short-sighted approaches in response to these issues, such as transferring of funds from one project to another, therefore only shifting precarious conditions rather than tackling the root of the problem.

Whilst new guidance on BRC’s Organisational approach to using Fixed Term Contracts states an aim of reducing the use of FTC contracts, we, the under-signed, do not believe protections for workers in BRC are adequate.
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We demand that:

1. All British Red Cross staff are provided with a minimum of 3 months’ notice of their contract changing (i.e. being terminated, extended or any significant change to their role).

2. Within the 3 months’ notice period, staff members are provided 1 hour per day within working hours to search for new employment or attend training.

3. “Continuous service” starts from the first day of contractual employment at the British Red Cross and it is not interrupted by breaks of less than 3 months in between FTCs.

4. An implementation plan for the Fixed Term Contract Guidance is published at the earliest opportunity to provide clarity on how it will affect each category of staff.

5. Regular periodic data is published internally on the following:
- Total number of staff who are currently on Fixed Term Contracts.
- Demographics of staff currently employed on Fixed Term Contracts including, but not limited to: age; gender; number of BAME staff; number of disabled staff.
- Number of people on Fixed Term Contracts within each Directorate.
- Number of people on Fixed Term Contracts employed under restricted funding projects and number of people under general funding
- Number of casual workers employed by the British Red Cross

6. The British Red Cross provides staff with offer letters stating the reasons which justify an appointment being made on a fixed term basis instead of a permanent contract. This information will normally be provided within 1 month of and under no circumstances later than 3 months, from the offer of appointment being made.

7. Casual workers who have been employed for 2 years or more are included in the FTC Guidance and the pay and benefits review.

8. All staff are transferred onto permanent contracts.