Social value procurement and labour standards in the United Kingdom: The UNISON ‘ethical care’ campaign for outsourced public services

In a context of sustained fragmentation and marketisation of public services, trade unions increasingly see the regulation of procurement processes as a pragmatic way to set decent minimum standards for outsourced workers. This approach hinges on building alliances with local politicians and employers to increase investment in the social value resulting from public sector contracts, while also leveraging media coverage and wider campaigning strategies to raise awareness of entrenched problems of low pay and precarious work in care services. In the absence of any significant prospect of insourcing, deprivatisation or re-municipalisation, the significant challenge is to scale up and sustain these localised agreements to improve both social value and labour standards, so as to cover as many private sector contractors as possible while also building capacity among outsourced workers from the bottom-up.