Case by case

Your recent article ‘Protecting jobs, promoting best practice’ (AP246) included information about Volunteering England’s opinion on volunteering and job substitution, some of which was taken from an old document that no longer represents our position. Steven Warner and Stephanie Cesana state that we consider volunteering “for a commercial or profit-making organisation” to be a case of job substitution. There are in fact many instances of legitimate volunteering in such organisations, such as providing recreational activities in care homes or stewarding at music festivals. Indeed, London 2012 Games Makers will be volunteering for LOCOG, a private sector organisation. Volunteering England’s view as to whether a role is volunteering is not based simply on the type of organisation, but also on the nature of that role. As we state in our Charter for strengthening relations between paid staff and volunteers, signed jointly with the TUC, the key point is that volunteers should “complement and supplement the work of paid staff, and should not be used to displace paid staff or undercut their pay and conditions of service”.

The article also stated that job substitution has occurred if a volunteer is “performing jobs or tasks that were formerly carried out by paid employees”. Working out how to apply that broad principle can be difficult, particularly with respect to public services. For example, if a library is going to close, or some staff have already been made redundant, and the local community volunteers its time to keep it open or maintain service levels, would that constitute job substitution? Should a distinction be made between using volunteers to ‘displace’ existing staff and volunteers coming forward to ‘replace’ those that have already lost their jobs so the community continues to benefit from the service?

Finally, the article stated that volunteers “performing jobs or tasks, which, because of their repetitive or unattractive nature require to be paid” is also job substitution. Again, whether or not such a role is volunteering needs to be decided on a case-by-case basis. Many volunteers willingly stuff envelopes and spend hours on the street collecting donations, and the organisations they volunteer for would be lost without them.

The problems raised in the article are of utmost seriousness for volunteers and volunteering as well as employees. There needs to be better understanding of the differing and complementary roles of paid staff and volunteers, and where volunteers are involved, good practice needs to be followed. It is for this reason that we are working with Voluntary Arts to develop a toolkit for arts organisations that will help them to involve volunteers to the benefit of all.