Meeting for Sufferings: Lancashire Friends speak on ethical employment practices
'Is it right to use zero hours contracts? Do we protect staff from bullying and exploitation?'
Friends in Lancashire Central and North AM then spoke about their work preparing to produce a resource on spirit-led ethical employment practice. This process would involve starting with a blank page, focusing on the future and creating a series of advices and queries.
Jon Martin and Lisa Whistlecroft, two members of the group, described how the concern had developed, since a minute was sent from Lancashire AM to MfS in autumn 2021. This followed a concern brought to the AM, following ‘heartfelt ministry by Friends who had witnessed firsthand the suffering of those who had been affected’ by employment practices within the Yearly Meeting.
‘As Quakers we’re good at looking at the world around us, but when it came to employment there became a concern we were not looking inwardly,’ said Jon Martin.
The close-knit nature of the Quaker community had made the work particularly difficult and ‘far from straightforward’, he said. This was compounded by ‘conflicts of interest’ and ‘raw and live issues’. He also wondered if sometimes: ‘Our niceness and morals help us to turn a blind eye and ignore injustices.’
At one point, they had considered laying down the group, he told the room, but then they realised that, ‘rather than drawing up a Quaker court to address past wrongdoing, we could draw up a toolkit for future Quaker employment guidelines’. For example: ‘Is it right to use zero hours contracts? Do we protect staff from bullying and exploitation? Do we consider the needs of employers reaching the end of a fixed-term contract?’
One BYM trustee said they were ‘grateful for the work done’ and ‘the use of advice and queries’ as ‘that sort of language does help in many different contexts’. A lot of employment injustices stem from the fact that ‘at AM-level most of the Quakers who are managing other Friends are volunteers, not professional managers’, and that creates more of a risk of mistakes. Another with warden experience, said: ‘Unfortunately there are a few bad employers within Quakers. The big question is how to reach [them]. There is a lot of advice out there, but they don’t read it.’
Friends thanked the group for having ‘the courage to persevere… Quakers aren’t good at conflict and we really don’t like to think of ourselves as not getting things right.’ Others echoed some bad experiences, with one Friend from the south west noting how, at a Quaker gathering, some catering staff had been spoken to in a rude and cold way. ‘We need to think carefully about what is said and how it is said.’
Another Friend from Wales mentioned he had heard several clerks say: ‘I took on being a clerk, not a manager.’ They didn’t feel they had the necessary qualities, he said, ‘so we need to think about how we manage that’.
Another Quaker, with significant management experience, said that, even with Quakers, ‘conflicts are inevitable, so the question becomes much more about how you engage with them well, and the processes by which you can evolve from them and move on’.
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