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The Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers (Usdaw) is a trade union in the United Kingdom, consisting of over 360,000 members.[3] Usdaw members work in a variety of occupations and industries including: shopworkers, factory and warehouse workers, drivers, call centres, clerical workers, milkround and dairy process, butchers and meat packers, catering, laundries, chemical processing, home shopping and pharmaceutical.
Usdaw relies upon a "partnership" model with large employers such as with Tesco, where the management of both the business and the trade union have "privileged access" to their counterparts. This arrangement, coupled with its actions, has been met with criticism, such as where the union seemingly presents itself as being concerned more with maintaining its positive, comfortable position and easy membership supply than that of fair representation of its members.[4] This attitude has earned the union the pejorative backronym of Useless Seven Days A Week amongst workers and trade unionists.[4][5]
It is widely considered to be on the right-wing on the political spectrum,[6][7] occupying the "politically conservative" section of the Labour Party.[8][9] Usdaw is also affiliated to the Co-operative Party.[10] In November 2021, the union was criticised at its refusal to negotiate with a Nottingham-based employer who was proposing a 'fire-and-rehire' policy leading to workers having to negotiate for themselves.[11]
In September 2024, Udsaw won a Supreme Court battle against Tesco over so-called "fire and rehire" plans put forward by the supermarket giant. The row erupted in 2021 after Tesco proposed firing staff at some distribution centres and rehiring them on lower pay.[12]
Statistics taken from the USDAW 2022 annual survey of over 7,700 of its retail members showed that high levels of verbal abuse, threats and assaults were common in the industry. The survey also found the number of incidents has come down since the exceptionally high levels during the pandemic, but remain higher than pre-Covid levels in 2019.[15]
